Though they come, respectively, from the worlds of throwing debauched parties, making films and planning glamorous events, each has now harnessed their talents for an unqualified good.
Scott Harrison spent much of the past decade throwing parties at Limelight, Lotus and Crobar, but one day found that he wanted something more. "I had a crisis of conscience," Harrison says, and he went on a trip to Liberia, taking photographs on a hospital ship. Since then, with charity: water, he's used his connections from selling expensive bottles of vodka to begin selling expensive bottles of water -- the $20 bottles sold in, for example, the Mercer Hotel, help raise money to dig wells in Africa.
David Belle's work for Festival Film Jakmel came about more gradually, starting in 1993 when he was in Haiti during its military junta and continuing in earnest after Belle began living there in 1994. "It's grown into a second home and a second family," Belle says. The festival's projects include helping to train Haitian filmmakers, but its biggest moment, perhaps, was getting Wyclef Jean to play the artsy (but relatively small) city of Jacmel in 2006. ("He's God," Belle says of Jean.)
Jess Atkins's MEAK, which assists Kenyans in need of eye and heart
surgeries, among other things, is planning a return trip to Kenya,
despite the country's recent upheaval. And Atkins will call upon skills
from her old gig as an events director for Vogue to manage the
unpredictable. "Going over there it's a totally different game," she
says. "In the middle of a heart surgery, the electricity [sometimes]
goes out."
Paul Underwood
(l-r) Scott wears a sweater by Uniqlo, shirt by Prada, and jeans by Spurr. Jess wears a shirt by Ports 1961, jeans by Club Monaco and bracelet by Ben-Amun. David wears a sweater by J. Crew, shirt by Dries Van Noten, jeans by Earnest Sewn and boots by Church's.
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