Alicia Keys uses her voice for the voiceless
VIDEO - Nonhlanhla Mqadi wants to be a famous singer. At 15, the walls of the bedroom she shares in this orphanage, outside Durban, South Africa, are covered...
Nonhlanhla Mqadi wants to be a famous singer. At 15, the walls of the bedroom she shares in this orphanage, outside Durban, South Africa, are covered with her American show biz idols.
“That’s Kelly Rowland. That’s Mary J. Blige…” said Nonhlanhla. And, most special of all to Nonhlanhla is Alicia Keys
Keys connection with the children of the Agape Orphanage runs far deeper than her music. “These are my folks,” said Keys.
Nonhlanhla and most of these children have lost their parents to AIDS. But they gained the attention and support of this Grammy winner.
“It just touched me deeply to know that there were these amazing young people who are just left with the world on their shoulders all by themselves,” said Keys.
It was on a trip to Africa in 2003 Keys saw for herself the enormity of the aids crisis, literally millions dying because they couldn’t get life-sustaining anti-retroviral drugs. Keys helped found “Keep a Child Alive”, a foundation that provides drugs to HIV infected patients in Africa and India.
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“She doesn’t just turn up for the red carpet, or she doesn’t get paid to come. She does it every single day.” said Leigh Blake, co-founder of Keep a Child Alive.
Its estimated than more than 10 percent of all South Africans are infected with HIV, almost 6 million people. Right now only a third of those who need the drugs to fight the virus are getting them.
These are the trenches of the AIDS battle. Places like the blue roof clinic in Durban, a region where the HIV infection rate is around 40 percent.
When Keys first saw it three years ago, it was a vacant nightclub. Patients like 20-year-old Sinenhlanhla Chili, once dying of AIDS, are rebounding thanks to free medications, treatment and counseling in a place that turns no one away.
Over the last five years, Alicia Keys has become a tireless fundraiser here at home. Recruiting celebrities to get her message out.
Her songs have made her an international sensation, but for these children she is family.
“It’s like we got a new big sis, like Alicia Keys,” said Nonhlanhla.
And it is the song in her heart that sends them hope.
