Reason Four: She’s a mother, an Oscar-winning movie star, a producer, a philanthropist, a bad ass …
We touched on Theron’s mother role as her number one focus and with that said, a close second comes her work as a philanthropist.
“Everyone has a part to play in making our world better. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been given an opportunity and a platform to speak about an issue that is very important to me,” the Academy Award winner has said, when announcing her collaboration with shoe brand Toms – the Toms x Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project. “I hope that maybe one talk given or one piece written reaches someone in a way that encourages or inspires them to do what they can to make a difference.”
The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP), created by Theron in 2007, invests in African youth to keep themselves safe from HIV/AIDS, with youths in South Africa being the primary area of focus, as the country with the highest number of people living with HIV in the world.
Theron was named a UN Messenger Of Peace in 2008 in recognition of her philanthropic endeavors also said that “It’s easy to get discouraged by the scope of a global challenge like ending AIDS. Sometimes it feels insurmountable, but every time I get to visit some of the projects and hear from the young people, I get recharged and I realize that even the small changes matter.”
