A few months ago, Influx looked at RED, worried that it might be in danger of getting drowned by the growing attention being placed on the environment.
We wondered if people were giving up on Africa and it was becoming a forgotten story.
We wondered if the interest and awareness for RED that we saw in 2006, was dwindling away.
We suggested that RED made more of an effort to get its story out.
This month, something big finally happened, with the help of Conde Nast’s Vanity Fair, who invited Bono to be the magazine’s first ever guest editor, for a special Africa issue for July.
In the magazine, RED gets the chance to share its story about getting pills to Africa’s 28 million AIDS sufferers.
The article talks about the power of ARVs to restore normalcy to the lives of AIDS victims and highlights the progress made by the country of Rwanda, where 67% of the people who need the drugs, now have them.
Elsewhere across the continent of Africa, only 28% are getting the drugs they need, so there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Beyond this month's Vanity Fair, RED seems to be making more of an effort with its communication, it has an active blog (RED, please make more of this!!!) and its starting to use YouTube a bit more.
The Vanity Fair July issue is a huge coup for RED, hopefully it will prompt more in the media world to donate the time and space to help RED tell its important story in new and intriguing ways.
