One Woman’s Wealth Of Care

When her only child, François, died in a helicopter accident in West Africa in 1986, Albina du Boisrouvray contemplated suicide. But, like the other individuals in this section, Boisrouvray is an alchemist, someone who turns her prvate pain into public gold. “I thought of François, who was a rescue pilot and a very courageous young man,” she says. “He would have thought that I was a wimp.” Instead, Boisrouvray — a French countess, journalist and movie producer with a large family fortune — sold off $100 million in paintings, jewels and businesses, and in 1989 used a large part of the proceeds to launch the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud (www.fxb.org) with a global mission to assist AIDS orphans and abandoned AIDS/HIV children.

“Gay groups had lobbies, adults had lobbies, but children had nobody,” she says. She started eight “houses of tender, loving care” for AIDS orphans, but on a visit to AIDS-ravaged Uganda in 1990 realized that more solutions were needed. In the rural area of Semuto, tribal leaders and grandparents wanted seeds to grow vegetables to feed orphans; others wanted a cow. Boisrouvray’s organization responded by giving out thousands of micro-grants of $75 to $125.

Today, with 87 projects in 17 countries, Boisrouvray fights AIDS, prostitution and child labor, while supporting health, education and human rights. In Burma, former sex workers have found new careers through cottage industries like furniture making. In Rwanda, a self-help scheme led to new homes for hundreds of war widows. Yet her battle has only begun.

By 2010, U.N. experts estimate the number of orphans will reach 106 million, around 25% of them AIDS orphans. The sight of children dying from AIDS is heart-breaking, but she knows not to give in to her own grief: “When you help people to help themselves, there’s a gleam of happiness, they click back to hope and trust in life. And that’s come back to me — it’s joy and happiness recycled.”