Called “an idea whose time has finally come,” Project Air is a not-for-profit organization that has implemented a unique program to help allay some of the trauma and mental health issues left in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Focusing on HIV+ women and their children, Project Air uses yoga to help genocide rape survivors manage the devastating effects of catastrophic sexual violence and HIV/AIDS. For the past two years, in collaboration with the medical NGO WE-ACTx, Project Air has reached thousands of HIV+ women and children, prompting the UN to endorse its work—the first time the UN has ever given formal endorsement to a yoga initiative.
To deliver on its mission to help the world’s most vulnerable girls and women, Project Air is now planning its first major regional expansion into Eastern Congo—one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a girl or woman. There, Project Air will work with treatment facilities that are performing life-saving fistula operations for survivors of the horrific rapes that have become the hallmark of the decade’s-old conflict in the region.
