| SAN FRANCISCO
- September 23 -Rainforest Action Network will host a reception honoring Sebastião Salgado for his unparalleled work around the world as both a humanitarian photographer and rainforest activist. Guests at the event will receive a photographic presentation by Mr. Salgado about Instituto Terra, the organization that he and his wife Lélia Wanick Salgado founded to revive vital areas of the devastated Atlantic Forest in Brazil’s River Doce Valley. The reception will be held on Friday, October 3 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor of the Giftcenter Pavilon located at 888 Brannan Street in San Francisco.
For over 25 years, Mr. Salgado has dedicated his career to telling the untold stories of marginalized members of the human family. His inspiring photographs have helped raise awareness and give faces to the victims of famine, industrialization and deforestation in over 40 countries. His books include “Other Americas,” “Workers: An Archeology of the Industrial Era,” “Sahel: Man in Distress,” “Terra,” “Uncertain Grace,” “Migrations,” and “The End of Polio.” Mr. Salgado was chosen to be a special representative of UNICEF and is an honorary member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States.
Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in the town of Aimorés in the Brazilian state of Minas Geerais. At that time, more than 70 percent of the region was alive with biologically rich forests covering an area twice the size of France. Today, only 7 percent of those survived the conversion to cattle pastures. Worse yet, Sebastião’s childhood home has been turned into an environmental wasteland, with only 0.3 percent of the original forests left standing. Since 1991, Salgado's organization has replanted over 500,000 new seedlings in the region, working in cooperation with local farmers, landless workers, and the indigenous Krenak tribe. Rainforest Action Network supports this effort through its Protect-An-Acre Program (http://www.ran.org/give/paa/).
Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing, and nonviolent direct action. From Burger King to Boise Cascade, Rainforest Action Network has been changing business-as-usual in America since 1985.
Rainforest Action Network will also recognize Mr. Salgado along with Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Josh Mailman and The National Lawyers Guild at the World Rainforest Awards later that evening.
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