Janine di Giovanni Quotes

It was a privilege to be president and it is a privilege to be a former president and I believe that I have got a chance to be a part of something that is influential - but not for my sake, but for the sake of people dying in Africa or people worried about a free society in their countries or people who wonder whether there will be a free market.

The work that Partners in Health do in Haiti benefits the whole world.

People in Ethiopia, the Sudan, etc., don't know Audrey Hepburn, but they recognize the name UNICEF. When they see UNICEF, their faces light up, because they know that something is happening. In the Sudan, for example, they call a water pump 'UNICEF.'

I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap.

I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

First I became U.N. Goodwill Ambassador for WHO, and that was in 2005. And then, about a year or so later, I decided to start my foundation.

I started out doing something little. I went to Africa to spend five weeks putting roofs on a building. I seen the small child that stepped on a land mine. Three months later, I'm back helping pull the land mines out. Little things just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Those of us who were lucky enough to be born in the right countries have a moral obligation to reduce poverty and ill health in the world.

I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.

Helping people in need is a good and essential part of my life, a kind of destiny.

I want to travel overseas and help out people all over the world.

I ask myself, 'What is the value of acting and the attention that actors get? And yet there are so many people in the world doing incredible things for mankind, and they don't get much attention.' I do question about that, but I don't think I would've been a great doctor. I think I would've been a good surgeon. That fascinated me.

My parents were in the Peace Corps.

I welcome the work that the Clinton Global Initiative has done with groups and individuals like Bono and all that's happened around the world.

In contemplating what to do with my life, I felt like I had two possible paths: one was to move to New York and work in a design house; the other was to move to Africa and deliver food aid. That's when the idea of the FEED bag came to me. It's for those who want to put their consumer dollars to good use.

There are so many incredible causes, no one better than the other. There are lots of organizations that need our help and lots of ways we need to help one another.

There is a myth that those who do humanitarian work have a saviour mentality, but the relationship is reciprocal.

When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered. Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility.

Crowdsourcing aid is a cunning way to work around the do-nothing corridors of official Washington. But it also raises complicated questions about the nature of humanitarianism and what it means for a 'nation' to help.

I always wanted to do NBA Cares but they didn't want me to represent the league. I just did Matt Cares instead. I went to Africa by myself to do camps and clinics.

When I was 13, I read 'Et la paix dans le monde, Docteur?' a physician's account of working with Medecins Sans Fontieres during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. It was this book that inspired me to work for MSF.

I want to be more than just an artist and be a people's person and do a lot of stuff for people.

You don't have to wait for a tragedy to occur to rush to help those in need.

When I first started working with World Vision, I would sit down and talk with them about issues that concern any part of the world. MSF told me about what was going on in North Korea. I also support AIDS and breast cancer charities.