Black Ball Helps Alicia Keys Bring AIDS Drugs to Kids

 

Alicia Keys saw the impact of AIDS 

during her first trip to Africa in 2003 and co-founded Keep a Child Alive.

Tonight the nonprofit will celebrate its 10th anniversary at the annual Black Ball. The charity’s $5 million budget helps local clinics in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa and India with treatment programs, food assistance and orphan care.
Enlarge image Alicia Keys

Alicia Keys, co-founder of Keep A Child Alive, helps with fundraising, hosts the Black Ball, engages her celebrity friends and has written letters to the president about HIV funding. Photographer: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images
Enlarge image Peter Twyman

Peter Twyman, chief executive officer of New York-based nonprofit Keep A Child Alive. The organization provides care for children with HIV. Photographer: Philip Lewis/Bloomberg
Enlarge image Peter Twyman

Peter Twyman, chief executive officer of New York-based nonprofit Keep A Child Alive. Singer Alicia Keys co-founded the organization and serves as its Global Ambassador. Photographer: Philip Lewis/Bloomberg

The performers tonight at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom will include Keys, singer-producer Pharrell Williams (“Blurred Lines”), Carole King, Kathleen Battle, British soul singer Laura Mvula and R&B-jazz fusion master Roy Ayers.

Last year, KCA tapped Peter Twyman, a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health, to be the organization’s chief executive officer. Twyman previously served as a regional program director at Columbia University’s International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs.

He spoke to me about the nonprofit’s work at Bloomberg News world headquarters in New York.

Twyman: It was a radical departure to go from Columbia to a celebrity-fronted charity. But the more I learned and talked to Alicia, I realized it’s an amazing organization first of all. It’s done amazing work on the ground, and what’s different about it from my previous job is that it’s working with community-based groups.