Kel Sheppey

Wild4life

Big Idea: 

Why we chose Kel as a Fellow

Driving a beat-up Land Rover from Cape Town to London, Kel realized that people in the rural parts of Africa have little access to virtually anything. A Zimbabwean wildlife biologist by training, Kel quit a successful corporate career to repeat a similar odyssey; but this time, he's using Wild4life to tackle HIV in remote African communities.

70% of the people affected by AIDS in Africa live in rural areas. 95% of them don't know their HIV status and have little access to HIV testing, treatment, or information. The vast majority of the efforts to combat HIV are in urban areas – no one has been able to reach rural people. But Kel has figured out how: to work through the organizations already integrated into rural communities, and leverage their resources to deliver HIV prevention and treatment to these hard-to-reach communities. Wild4life uses a group dynamic to get employees tested, get those who need it into treatment, and use the testing momentum to get prevention programs rolling, and then expand the whole effort into the community.

Rainer Arnhold Fellows