Ali Hewson, co-founder of Edun, talks about the company's goal of "raising Africa back into the world of trade."
BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET airs Tuesdays at 9PM on SUNDANCE CHANNEL
Alison, known by pretty much everyone as Ali, was born to Terry and Joy Stewart in Dublin on March 23, 1961.
She grew up on the city’s north side and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where on her first day of school, Ali caught the attention of Paul Hewson, soon to become Bono.
The pair began dating when Ali was 15 and Bono was 16.
Ali worked in motor insurance and with her father in his electrical business after leaving Mount Temple.
On Aug.21, 1982, Bono and Ali were married. While her husband toured the world and made albums with U2, Ali went back to school.
Though she’d always wanted to be a nurse, Ali decided to pursue other studies at University College Dublin.
"I wanted that personal contact with people, the one-to-one, the medical expertise, I still do", Ali told the Irish Times magazine in 2000."But Bono’s life had taken off in one direction and I realized that if I went into nursing I was going to have to live in for four very intensive years.It would have been too much on the relationship." Instead, Ali earned a social science degree with an emphasis on political science and sociology.
Two weeks before finals, Ali gave birth to daughter Jordan, born on May 10, 1989, her father’s 29th birthday.
Infant Jordan and father Bono were there to watch Ali receive her degree. Ali planned on earning a Master’s degree in moral and political ethics, but the birth of daughter Memphis Eve on July 7, 1991 put further schooling on hold.
Instead of studying politics, Ali’s next move was to become an activist. After the Live Aid concerts in 1985, Ali and Bono traveled to Ethiopia to see the situation there firsthand.
The couple worked at an orphanage for a month, writing songs and plays to teach the children lessons about things like health and hygiene.
In 1986, Ali and Bono traveled through Nicaragua and El Salvador as the countries dealt war and political upheaval. In the 90s Ali began her work related to the Sellafield nuclear plant, a British plant that sends waste water into the Irish Sea, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
To protest the building of THORP, a Sellafield site where nuclear waste from all over the world would be collected, Ali organized a publicity stunt where U2, with Greenpeace, donned radiation suits as they delivered drums of contaminated mud from the Irish Sea. In 1993, Ali went to Belarus to participate in the creation of Black Wind, White Land, an award-winning documentary that detailed life in Belarus in the years following the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
Ali’s experiences in Belarus furthered her passion for the Sellafield cause.Anyone who lives 600 kilometers around a nuclear installation should be concerned.
Since 1994 Ali has been patron of the Chernobyl Children’s Project, an Irish charity that works with children affected by the disaster by raising money for needed operations and sometimes even finding adoptive parents.
One child, the now 10-year-old Anna Gabriel who was born in Belarus with deformities due to radiation exposure suffered by her mother, was adopted by a couple in County Cork and is Ali’s goddaughter. To mark the 16th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in 2002, Ali fronted a campaign to get households across Ireland to send postcards to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles and Norman Askew, chairman of British Nuclear Fuels, to shut Sellafield.
The campaign was an overwhelming success with 1.2 million of the 1.3 million households in Ireland sending cards to the three officials. Ali hand-delivered hers to Blair’s home. Ali’s been the somewhat reluctant recipient of many honors for her work.
In 2002, she and Adi Roche, founder of the Chernobyl Children’s project, were conferred with honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from University of Ireland, Galway.
The Irish Labour Party approached Ali to run for president of Ireland in 2004, but she declined."For one thing I’m not sure I’m qualified, and for another I’ve got four small kids to bring up first," Ali told the BBC.
"On top of that, my husband says we couldn’t possibly move into the president..s official mansion and set up home in a smaller house." Though she wasn..t interested in a presidential campaign, recently Ali became the subject of a campaign to have Victoria Quay, named for Queen Victoria, renamed to Alison Quay in her honor.
"I started thinking about Irish people that might be worthy recipients and because of her humanitarian background, anti-Sellafield stance and overall popularity, Alison was an obvious candidate."
In the midst of all her work for Chernobyl Children’s Project and Shut Sellafield, Ali gave birth to sons Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q on Aug. 11, 1999, and John Abraham on May 20, 2001.
Soon after John..s birth, Ali jokingly assured the Irish press that she and Bono would not be having more children.
Ali is now the founder of the EDUN fashion label, which encourages fair trade with third world nations and the abolishment of sweatshops and child labor.
