'See Orange' raises AIDS awareness

A sea of orange flooded the UW campus Friday as hundreds of students sported brightly colored T-shirts with the word "Orphan" boldly displayed across their chests.

The motivation behind the unusual phenomenon was humanitarian in nature. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a religious student organization, hoped to raise awareness of the 12 million sub-Saharan African children orphaned by AIDS.

The "See Orange" campaign, as it has been dubbed by its sponsor, World Vision, a Washington-based global Christian charity, is taking place at more than 150 universities across the country.

Steve Haas, World Vision's vice president of church relations, was on hand at Friday's events and gave extended remarks about AIDS in Africa to the 200 or so UW students who stood in Red Square from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the warm midday sun.

Other speakers included Bwalya Melu, a World Vision employee from Zambia who lost three of his brothers to AIDS; he thanked students for their participation before sharing some sobering realities about the pandemic.

"We talk about orphans; they have names, and for me they have faces [HTML_REMOVED] they're Ansa and Jacob," Melu said. "We have to get beyond the veil of the numbers."

Hannah Yamamoto, a sophomore who helped organize the day's events, had similar feelings about the campaign against AIDS.

"You need to get to know someone who has the disease to see how it really affects their life," she said. "I'd like to see some local involvement."

Haas was the main speaker, and aside from relatively short speeches by Melu and a few UW students, Haas' voice echoed in Red Square for most of the event. The former pastor and relief worker told various stories about past experiences of meeting people infected with AIDS around the world, including a child in Mali who wore a down jacket even on hot days to keep his body temperature stable.

Haas asked students to choose which of three Africans they would treat with anti-retroviral drugs if they could only choose one person to receive the life saving treatment. One choice was Charlie, a homosexual practicing surgeon married to a female pharmacist. The next choice was Sally, a health care worker, barista and mother of two and the final option was Namsa, a circumcised domestic worker looking forward to marriage.

After each new piece of information about the three candidates was revealed, students were asked to vote on whom they would save.

Meanwhile, local artist Scott Erickson painted three portraits of African children, each on a separate canvas, atop the stone benches in the middle of Red Square. Erickson, who has traveled to Africa and has a friend with HIV, said he felt it is important to make a difference wherever possible.

"What you hear is that it's hard to know what to do," he said. "But you're here in Seattle, and it's here too."

After the speeches, students walked out of Red Square and up to University Presbyterian Church on Northeast 47th Street and 15th Avenue Northeast for the opening of an exhibit designed to give viewers a sense of what life is like for children in Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS. The exhibit is open to the public and is scheduled to stay in Seattle until May 17.

Reach reporter Jake Sommer at news@thedaily.washington.edu.