Artists and Activists Unite to Improve Maternal Health at MDGFive.com

NEW YORK — Artists and activists are lending their voices to the global chorus to improve maternal health through a new interactive website and online community.

The new initiative, MDGFive.com, which was launched in conjunction with the Millennium Development Review Summit, is specifically aimed at building momentum for the achievement of MDG 5, which calls for significant improvement in maternal health by 2015.

The website brings the creative impulse and the power of popular culture to the issue of women’s health. It serves as a channel for music and videos on the subject by world-renowned artists, filmmakers and poets, including Zap Mama, DJ Spooky, Toni Blackman, and Carlos Andrés Gómez, Christy Turlington Burns, Paul Blackthorne, and Azfar Rizvi. The launch event in New York last night was marked with powerful poetry and song, such as Tahani Salah’s homage, “Women, mother sister, your strength is beyond compare.”

The MDGFive.com website also features a “remixer” that makes it easy for anyone to create short videos using a library of music tracks, spoken word, film, and photos supplied by popular mixed media artists from Brazil, Honduras, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and other countries. A global contest encourages people to produce their own videos, and many are already accessible on the site.

Through its support for the project, UNFPA hopes to generate broader awareness and spur action on one of its key issues, the health of mothers. The project has also caught the attention of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who recently said: “The arts are one of the most powerful ways to build bridges among people from all over the world. MDGFive.com has great potential to reach, inform, and mobilize people to make a difference for women’s and children’s health.”

"By working collaboratively with professional artists from around the world, we feel MDGFive.com will engage a local-global dialogue in this new media environment,” said Emmy-winning filmmaker Lisa Russell, co-founder of the initiative along with Grammy-winning singer Maya Azucena. “Artists have tremendous influence in their communities and are eager to lend their voice."