Red Cross Blogs

World AIDS day takeover

By Anna Carter
December 2, 2009 at 10:33 pm

For many people the first day of advent means the official start of Christmas. The first door on the advent calendar is opened, Christmas songs appear on the radio, shops begin to look festive and the countdown to Christmas begins. This has been lost on me for a few years. In the world of all things HIV, the 1st December has an altogether different meaning. Yesterday was the 21st world AIDS day; a day set aside on the international calendar to remember those living with HIV; currently a global figure of 33 million people.

My day began with a quick flurry of texts reminding my nearest and dearest to wear their red ribbons in support of world AIDS day. This is a ritual that is beginning to get as entrenched as the advent calendar and a few of my friends pre-empted my text with one informing me of their participation in the ribbon wearing the evening to before. They love it. After that I sent a round robin text to all the peer educators on the south coast reminding them to get involved in awareness raising in some way-if only wearing a ribbon and sharing with anyone who asks why they are doing so. A quick update of my facebook status and all modern forms of instant communication had been covered.

On my way into work I began to get feedback from some of the young people in the area and their World AIDS day morning ritual. One report from Hampshire included an entire bus full of commuters being showered in red ribbons, with everyone getting one along with an explanation of what they stood for.  Another of the young people that I work with had slipped information leaflets, posters a quiz and ribbons into every register in the school spreading awareness throughout her school and getting every year involved. 

The morning was spent in a (very cold) Hoglands park in Southampton with another eager peer educator who had arranged an event to spread the message to the general public. We gave out red ribbons out to members of the public who stopped by the park to see what was going on and encouraged people to light a candle to demonstrate their support for all those living with HIV, but in particular the 2.3 million children who are living with HIV. We managed to involve 200 members of the public in the event.

During the afternoon I got inundated with young people letting me know how they had got involved in World AIDS Day in their local area; some had taken over the assembly for the day to deliver a session about HIV in the UK, others had dressed in red and given out red ribbons to their college, still more had organised special citizenship sessions around HIV transmission. All in all the young people reached over 2000 people with their messages of HIV awareness. A truly phenomenal achievement and a sign that the young people may well be taking over down here on the south coast!

The day ended with a frantic planning session for our new THT funded HIV project ABC Outspoken that will be running in the New Year. The project aims to deliver HIV awareness session and sexual reproductive health sessions to the rural areas of our area. Service provision in these areas is not as comprehensive as those provided for the urban centres. Our aim is to use the funding to create sustainable interventions for young people in the rural parts of the county. Spreading the message, not the virus .

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Tags: AIDS, hampshire, HIV, isle of wight, southampton, surrey, take action, World AIDS Day, young people

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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