More than 200,000 American women develop breast cancer every year, and about 40,000 lose their fight with the disease. After her mother died of breast cancer in 1997, Patricia Arquette vowed she would do everything she could to raise awareness about the disease and continue the fight for a long-awaited cure.

Patricia has run in the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and also was the spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education.

In this talk, Patricia tells the personal story of how breast cancer has affected her family, reveals the measures she takes to protect herself, and discusses how raising awareness about the disease and women’s health is more important than ever.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE GENDER WAGE GAP AND HOW IT IMPACTS US ALL

THE STORY OF GIVELOVE

Patricia Arquette’s nonprofit GiveLove is not just an ordinary charity. GiveLove takes a hands-on approach to helping those in need by empowering people to help themselves.

GiveLove not only implements life-saving technologies in developing countries and emergency contexts, but also by educating communities on how to sustain those same technologies long after first recovery efforts are over. In this talk, Patricia explains GiveLove’s philosophy, which includes a major focus on education through Green School Programs and community-based technical training.

These programs provide a place where children and communities learn about sanitation and ecology by seeing these principles in action and participating in the management of the projects. Their skills-transfer approach breaks from the standard aid model of dependency so that communities learn best practices to improve health in their own communities.

GiveLove strives to support holistic community-led projects that help foster ecological awareness and empower Haitians of all ages with the skills they need to build and manage their own sanitation systems.

This multi-media presentation, which includes photos and video footage of eco-sanitation training and technology in action, will show audiences that helping others goes far beyond monetary giving.

Eco-Sanitation, Sustainability, and Public Health 

The realities are harsh—2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation and 1.1 billion people do not have access to the most basic survival requirement: clean water. Lack of sanitation kills more children than AIDS, Malaria, and TB combined.

And the number one pollutant to water sources, which is caused by poor sanitation, is entirely preventable. In this talk, Patricia Arquette addresses these harsh realities, and explains how her nonprofit, GiveLove, is using eco-sanitation technologies to work against them in Haiti.

Patricia explains thermophilic composting technology, which, though a simple science, the dangerous pathogens in human excreta—the stuff that poisons millions—can be eliminated and transformed into new soil for growing crops that provide nutrients and save lives.

Finally, Patricia explains how the same technologies GiveLove uses in Haiti could provide innovative, affordable solutions to one of the world’s biggest, most dangerous problems.