On every page, Rise celebrates local heroes –mothers, farmers, surgeons, teachers, schoolchildren –people living on poverty’s frontline, who are taking a lead in their communities to make a better future for their families. The book brings a fresh vision for the developing world by focusing on bottom up initiatives, which empower local communities to find and implement their own solutions to their most pressing needs. Local initiatives tend to be more sustainable, and scalable, in meeting a communities needs, than programmes designed in distant lands and dependent upon foreign aid. “ (Extract from Rise)
As one of eight photographers involved in this project, I travelled to Ethiopia in 2010 to document the work of The Legatum Foundation, in partnership with Geneva Global, who is working with local implementors to tackle the many faceted social problems caused by HIV and the stigma it has carried historically.