ANNE-CHRISTINE D’ADESKY
In 2003, Ms. d’Adesky co-founded the Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment initiative (WE-ACTx) with two US physician colleagues to provide Rwandan genocide rape survivors and orphans with lifesaving HIV drugs and care. WE-ACTx has since provided free, comprehensive HIV treatment to over 5000 women and children via two clinics in Kigali since 2004 in a public-private partnership with the Rwandan government and some 27 Rwandan grassroots organizations. Today, WE-ACTx is run by an all-Rwandan staff and international volunteers and Ms. D’Adesky remains on the Board of Directors.
Immediately after Haiti’s historic January 2010 earthquake, Ms. D’Adesky shifted her professional focus to Haiti, where she has longtime family roots. She began reporting from the ground several days after the earthquake via a blog, Haiti Vox. It sought to network first responders with women’s and orphans groups. She also published articles on Haiti’s progress in the national recovery effort for the Global Post and World Pulse magazine. She also co-founded PotoFanm+Fi (Women’s and Girls’ Pillar in Kreyol) with Haitian and diaspora women’s leaders to support Haitian women’s voices in the rebuilding effort. She was a primary author of a joint Gender Shadow Report on Haiti, a critical analysis of the government’s post-disaster reconstruction blueprint, later released by Gender Action. She also helped co-produce a documentary film-in-progress about Haiti and food security, Hands That Feed.
In 2011, Ms. d’Adesky spearheaded PotoFanm+Fi’s “ PotoFi” (Girls Pillar) initiative to spotlight the urgent needs of Haitian adolescents girls for sexual violence services. PotoFi’s 2011 field survey of over 2000 adolescent girls confirmed an alarming link between post-quake sexual violence, early pregnancy, and rising poverty.She also served as primary researcher and author of a comprehensive field report, Beyond Shock: Charting the Landscape of Sexual Violence in Haiti (2010-2012), now being released as a book in October 2013.
Earlier this year, PotoFanm+Fi and the PotoFi team hosted the first of a series of forums for cross-sector professionals on GBV and Adolecents, working with V-Day partner AFASDA (Women of the Sun) on workshops in the north of Haiti. PotoFanm+Fi is currently planning a pilot health and justice initiative in rural Haiti to address key gaps in the service needs of Haitian teens, and is working with AFASDA and other partners to push forward gender justice programs.
Ms. D’Adesky is also coordinator of the West Coast Haiti Network.
As a journalist, Ms. D’Adesky began her professional career covering Haiti’s democratic movement in the 1980s and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the San Francisco Examiner for her front-page electoral coverage and human rights exposes. A first novel, Under the Bone (FSG 1994) is set in post-Duvalier Haiti. A second non-fiction book, Moving Mountains (Verso 2004) examined the challenges of providing universal coverage of AIDS treatment to citizens of poor nations. An activist memoir of the 90s, The Pox Lover, is planned for release in 2014. In film, she co-produced and co-directed a one hour documentary film, Pills, Profits, Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement (Outcast Films), airing throughout 2006 on US Showtime.
She is also the recipient of several awards for her AIDS advocacy including amfAR’s inaugural “Honoring With Pride” award and an AIDS Hero award from the San Francisco community. She was named among the ‘Top 35 to Watch’ global AIDS leaders by OUT Magazine in 2010.
Ms. d’Adesky is parent of two teenage girls and divides her time between Oakland, CA and Haiti.
