How Victoria Beckham became a UNAids ambassador and what it means to her

An eye-opening trip to South Africa at the suggestion of Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, and the realisation that ‘people listen to what I have to say’, persuaded fashion designer to take on HIV/Aids prevention role

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Victoria Beckham with a Kenyan girls’ soccer team during her visit to the African country as a UNAids goodwill ambassador. Photo: Courtesy of Victoria Beckham

Published: 12:15pm, 14 Oct 2016Updated: 3:24pm, 15 Oct 2016

Victoria Beckham has been in the news this week, and not just for her Vogue Australia cover or her new beauty range launched with Estee Lauder. She and her 17-year-old son Brooklyn have been visiting clinics and centres in Kiambu County, Kenya, to raise awareness of HIV and Aids testing, treatment and eradication. During her last visit to Hong Kong, the British star and fashion designer told SCMP.com how she become a UNAids goodwill ambassador.

“It took me getting to 40 to realise that for whatever reason, people listen to what I have to say,” she says. “I’ve been a patron to the Elton John Aids Foundation for over 20 years but just as I was approaching my 40th birthday, I wanted to do something more significant, to give back in a bigger way.”

She had talked to other celebrities such as Ben Affleck and Bono about their extensive charity work, but it wasn’t until a trip to South Africa that she discovered the project to which she would devote her time.

Victoria Beckham and Olivia Ranguma, the wife of the Kisumu governor, visit mothers and children in Kenya. Photo: Courtesy of Victoria Beckham

“I was having breakfast with [Vogue US editor-in-chief] Anna Wintour and we were working together on a project [to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and Aids]. She said to me, ‘My team are actually going to South Africa, you should go with them.’ And so I did. Going there changed the way I feel.”

It was in Cape Town that she met people from the UN. Months later, she was appointed one of its goodwill ambassadors, and delivered an impassioned speech to the UN General Assembly in New York in 2014 which received wide media coverage.