A new ‘Day’ of activism

During her sophomore year at UW-Madison, Anna Day attended a lecture by Stephen Lewis about the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Lewis, a former United Nations special envoy for H.I.V./AIDS in Africa, issued a call for global activism. Day took it to heart. Within six months she organized Project 40/40, an awareness and fundraising campaign for the Clinton H.I.V./AIDS Initiative. The project aimed to raise money for H.I.V. tests and treatment by partnering the 40,000 students at UW with the 40,000 H.I.V.-positive people living in Uganda.

Day along with founding directors and interns of Project 40/40. Photo provided by Anna Day

Inspiration often strikes at unexpected moments, but Day’s decision to take action didn’t come out of the blue. Raised in a family that values altruism and activism, she learned about advocacy at a young age. Her mother, an attorney, ran the Idaho Volunteer Lawyers Program, a legal aid clinic, while her older sister Molly spent her senior year of college in Malawi, conducting research on H.I.V./AIDS education, microfinance and women’s rights.

“Anna and I have been so lucky to have all these positive role models in our lives who are women,” Molly says. “We had a childhood where we were constantly exposed to opportunities to help people who were not as fortunate as us.”

Those role models helped shape Day’s decision to attend UW. She says she was drawn to the university primarily because of the opportunities for activism on campus.

“[The school’s] history of activism… is one of the proudest [chapters] in Wisconsin history, I think,” she says, citing the university’s pivotal role in the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements.

Louis Washington, lead character in Day's original production, The Awakening. Photo provided by Anna Day

It was that legacy that inspired Day to launch Project 40/40 and set a series of ambitious fundraising goals. In spring 2008, project interns organized 20 H.I.V./AIDS awareness and fundraising events, collecting incremental donations from over 800 people. All told, Project 40/40 raised $3,000, providing one year of treatment to 20 H.I.V.-positive people in Uganda.

That summer, while studying in Amman, Jordan, Day had the opportunity to work on another project. She wrote “The Awakening: A Hip Hopera,” a hip-hop musical that tells the story of modern Uganda through the eyes of a family that endures war, poverty, disease and oppression. In writing the piece, Day’s goal was to explore the relationships between AIDS, poverty, armed conflict and women’s sexual oppression, in the context of the tumultuous history of the Acholi tribe in Northern Uganda. In April 2010, the production premiered at UW, with Day as producer. Performances of “The Awakening” raised over $6,000 for the Clinton H.I.V./AIDS Initiative.