Champions brings together photographs made by Bastiaan Woudt during his journey to Zambia in 2023. Created in collaboration with Orange Babies to mark the organisation’s 25th anniversary, the project centres on the people working towards a different future for their communities. Through black-and-white portraits and landscapes, Woudt looks beyond hardship to the dignity, determination and sense of responsibility of those he met.

At the heart of the project are the young people known as Champions. Trained by Orange Babies, they share information about HIV, challenge stigma and create safe spaces where their peers can discuss sexual health and ask for support. Their work reaches beyond awareness: they help other young people return to education, find guidance and see possibilities for their own lives. They are advocates and role models within the communities they know.

This approach grew from Orange Babies’ experience with Community Mothers: women who had received support and went on to care for vulnerable children in their neighbourhoods. Their work showed how change could come from within a community. The Champions programme carries that idea into a younger generation, opening conversations that silence and stigma had often prevented.

Woudt wanted to photograph these young adults as people with agency and presence, rather than define them by vulnerability. His portraits give form to their strength through gesture, posture, light and shadow. Alongside them, photographs of schoolchildren, the wider community and the surrounding landscapes place these encounters in the setting where people live and work. Together, the images connect individual lives with the collective effort behind them.

The collaboration also provided direct financial support. A benefit exhibition on World AIDS Day, 1 December 2023, raised more than €120,000, with all proceeds donated to Orange Babies. The wider Champions project subsequently raised over €200,000 through artwork sales, an auction and private acquisitions. These contributions supported Orange Babies’ work; they are distinct from the sale of this book.

Published by 1605 Collective in 2024, the 264-page hardcover brings this body of work together in a sequence designed by Janneke Schrey and Bastiaan Woudt. A foreword by Orange Babies founder Baba Sylla introduces the project. The book offers time and space to look closely at the people behind the photographs and the community work that gave Champions its name.