Ryan Lewis and his mother, Julie Lewis, have teamed up with Construction for Change. Together the Seattle-based non-profit organization and the mother and son duo are launching the 30/30 Project. The project hopes to bring affordable healthcare coverage to those who need it most. The project team also plan on opening various health centers all over the world.
In a recent interview, the Grammy-Award winning producer spoke on the project and how people can get involved. On a person note Ryan also touched on his mom having HIV for thirty years, how he found out, and more.
On when he found out she had HIV:
She got diagnosed when I was two years old, so she didn’t know she had HIV until six years after she was infected. My parents didn’t tell me or my sisters until I was six and my two older sisters were eight and ten. They told us all at the same time. I remember going to a park, it was kind of a flower garden, and my dad pulled us aside one at a time. You know, six is a super different age from eight, which is a super different age from ten. He was trying to explain it in a way that we could understand, and for a six-year-old, that’s a lot to wrap your head around. And as parents, you’re not trying to instill a whole bunch of fear within your kids.
On the 20/20 Project:
To give a little bit of background, my mom has been working for an organization called Construction for Change for the last few years. For each of these projects—although who we’re partnering with changes depending on location—Construction for Change is actually building all of the structures. They’re on every project. That’s something [my mom] has been doing for the past few years, building things like medical centers and schools. When she came up to the thirty-year mark of surviving HIV-positive, the 30/30 Project was a bit more of a personal project that took what she knew and what Construction for Change is very good at doing, which is building structures that will sustain for a number of years.
Full interview here.
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