THE NEW GIRL POWER Victoria Beckham writes about finding strength in family, making a difference and her hopes for the future.
Victoria Beckham championed Girl Power through the Spice Girls and her fashion designs. Now the global powerhouse is using her voice to help women in African communities as a UNAIDS International Goodwill Ambassador. Here, she writes about finding strength in family, making a difference and her hopes for the future.
When I turned 40 two years ago, I knew that I wanted to do something to mark the milestone, but I didn’t want to have a party. I felt strongly that this new venture would be something I could look back on and be proud of. As it transpired, I was with Anna Wintour a few months ahead of my birthday and realised that I wanted to focus on charity work. Although over the past 20 years I have been involved with a huge number of domestic and international charities, this felt different – I needed an organisation that I could really get involved with.
“Anna told me her team was about to visit South Africa and suggested I join them. I was already working with Vogue on a project where I had to design a dress using a print created by an African woman, so I jumped at the opportunity. While there, I met with people from the United Nations and that was really the
start of this journey for me; that was when I realised my voice could make people listen and that I could help raise awareness.
“During the trip, I met incredible, strong and powerful women who are holding their communities together. These women took me into their homes and shared their stories. Among the many things I learnt from that first expedition was the process of PMTCT, the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (of HIV). That is, with simple, readily available medication, mothers with HIV could prevent the transmission of the disease onto their unborn babies, and therefore a whole new generation could be, should be, born free of the virus. It was a revelation.
“Soon after, the United Nations invited me to become their Global Goodwill Ambassador for UNAIDS – a huge honour and a role I take very seriously. If I can help keep AIDS on the agenda and help lobby governments and health authorities to continue funding the programs in their countries, we have a real opportunity to eradicate HIV and AIDS in the future. It has been a phenomenal learning experience – we have come such a long way in the AIDS response, but we need to continue to safeguard global access to treatment and to ensure that no-one is left behind because of gender, sexuality, poverty or gender-based violence.
“I have spoken at the UN General Assembly twice and met business leaders in Beijing to urge for more private sector involvement while highlighting the stigma and discrimination targeted at people living with HIV in China. Over the past three years, I have undertaken various field trips to Ethiopia and South Africa with UNAIDS and its partner NGOs – including mothers2mothers, Elton John AIDS Foundation and Born Free – and soon I am travelling to Kenya to highlight the launch of a new initiative, Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free. It’s a global plan that aims to support the [prevention of the] initial mother-to-child transmission process and then follow through to talk to adolescents and young women, educating and empowering them against HIV, and continue on the path of a future AIDS-free generation. Born Free partners with the Kenyan government, and as part of my visit I will meet the first lady of Kenya and travel to regions, visit the clinics and meet health workers. Kenya still has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, so we are trying to help accelerate the process of educating teenage girls and boys.
“My children have always been involved in the charities we support, so Brooklyn will join me on this trip. He is now 17 and has a sense of responsibility, so has asked to come along and learn about how he can communicate with his peers. He has an enormous social media following, so hopefully can make a new generation more aware of the issues. Brooklyn has accompanied me on charity trips before. When we lived in America, he came with me on a trip to Kentucky, where we raised awareness for poverty issues across America with Save the Children. It was a great learning experience for him.
“The women in Africa are so inspiring. They are the ones who are driving progress and pushing for change, primarily because they talk to each other. It was a privilege to sit and discuss, as mothers, their hopes and fears for the future of their children. Men are different: they communicate in a different way. So with our journey to Kenya I am hoping that Brooklyn can go out and play football with the men, and that the men and boys can relate to him in a way that they can’t relate to me.
“I think it is very important as a mother to teach your children to give back and to be charitable. I doubt there is a mother out there who doesn’t want her child to know how lucky they are and aims to teach her child to be loving, caring, hardworking and humble. Before my trip to Ethiopia, my daughter, Harper [aged 5],