Photo: Brett Eloff/Oxfam America

Note: This post kicks off a new blog series for 2013 on the transformative power of photography. Each week we will highlight one outstanding Oxfam photo and share more information about the story behind the image. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome!

As the director of the Malawi Health Equity Network, Martha Kwaitane is leveraging a tiny investment of US foreign aid to improve rural people’s access to quality healthcare throughout Malawi.

If you live in Washington, DC, or visit in the city in the coming weeks, you might spot Brett Eloff’s portrait of Kwaitane, above, in the airport or on the Metro. She’s one of four inspiring leaders featured on a brand-new series of Oxfam billboards, which call on US legislators not to cut the global poverty-fighting assistance that helps people like Kwaitane transform their countries.

Read more about Martha Kwaitane and the billboards here.

HIV/AIDS caregiver Lebogang Molefi, right, with patient Maria Mogale, in South Africa’s North West Province. Molefi works for Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba, one of thousands of community organizations helping the country’s roughly 5.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS. Photo: Brett Eloff / Oxfam America

Last month I won a free subscription to the glitzy celebrity magazine US Weekly. At first I was skeptical, but I’ll admit it’s become a guilty pleasure: After working on poverty issues all week at Oxfam, I kind of enjoy reading about fashion faux pas and learning how celebrities are “just like us!”

I never thought the two worlds would collide, but they did last week, when the magazine covered pop singer Madonna’s battle to adopt Mercy James, a 3-year-old girl from Malawi. It was bizarre to flip through those shiny pages, filled with expensive clothes and glamorous photos, and then read about a country with a reported 1.5 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

Read the rest of this entry »