Fifty dollars for a pair of (RED) Chuck
Taylors, $30 for vintage denim jeans worn to perfect elasticity, $10 spent on a
red triple nylon cord ID bracelet with an engraving of an iconic red ribbon,
and the total portion spent going to AIDS/ HIV awareness makes it all
priceless. The fashion industry
has been a long time beacon of inspiration, hope, and bold change throughout
the world. Within the past decade
the fashion industry has used its power to start making a difference with a
cause – to spread awareness on the AIDS/ HIV epidemic. Organizations and campaigns such as the
popular (RED) campaign, Housing Works, Until There is a Cure, and Designers
Against AIDS are a few that have taken a stand against the fight against
AIDS, one t-shirt and bracelet at a time.
“In America we ignore HIV/AIDS problem
and we need to erase the stigma and restart the conversation. By wearing our bracelets you’re saying
this still matters,” said Nora Hanna,
Executive Director of the Until There’s A Cure organization. Until There is a Cure is a organization
that started in 1993 and was the first to use bracelets to raise awareness for
a cause. Through selling these
bracelets they have been able to fund research and education towards the cause
of finding a cure. Hanna said that
the organization was able to “reinvest
22 million dollars back into the cause”, which is 85 percent of the total
proceeds. “When you buys a
bracelet, what you're doing is making sure the next generation is born free of
HIV,” said Hanna.
Housing
Works, another organization
dedicated to helping with the plight of the homeless and people diagnosed with
HIV/ AIDS, uses vintage fashion and furniture to help support those who have
been abandoned due to being infected with the virus. After 22 years in business they have created twelve spacious
and trendy thrift stores /coffee shops set up all around New York City; contributing 100 percent of their funds in
support for their community healthcare centers, providing homes for the
homeless, and job rehabilitation.
With a wide selection of affordable yet trendy clothes, books, and
furniture; buying from this store is not just buying for a cause, but also
buying in style.
“Recycling is very much in vogue,
thrift is the ultimate recycle, your taking old pieces of furniture home and
giving it new life; and that's what we seek to do with people, we seek to bring
people back to life, by offering them our resources. So by buying our products,
your helping give people a second chance on life,” said President and Co-founder of Housing Works Charles King.
According to Kin, buying products from
the organization’s thrift stores and coffee shops, helps by keeping the
organizations many programs running.
Programs as in health home care, AIDS adult day health care, primary
care, mental health services, housing for people with chemical dependency, job
opportunities, and legal services.
Housing Works was created in
response to his and the other founders role in the organization ACT UP.Being
apart of the ACT UP housing committee, they were concerned with the housing of
homeless diagnosed with HIV/ AIDS and the government's lack of involvement for
these people.
“We have found in the past, there is a sort of cynicism and lack
of knowledge among youth, especially those that were not born yet or were too young when
AIDS first broke out. AIDS is
rarely talked about now and is seen as something that can be managed or even
scarier as something that is very distant to their existence,” said Ninette Murk, founder and creative director
of Designers Against AIDS. “To overcome these obstacles what we thought we
would do is present the message through things people are genuinely interested
in, so that is why we chose to marry fashion, celebrities and the safe sex
message. By receiving the message
through their idols and role models, instead of preaching and other doom-like
ways, we hope this message strikes a chord with them and stays with them”.
Designers
Against AIDS (DAA)
is an international organization that specifically targets spreading awareness
of AIDS/ HIV to the youth of the world. DAA promotes awareness by using international
celebrity support and using designers to change the stigmas behind the
virus. The DAA collaborates with
many international designers, one of its most recent collaborations was with H&M’s Fashions Fight on AIDS. H&M Fashion Fight on AIDS
collection uses tribal patterns and fun colors to appeal to a young audience,
and even more appealing is that 50% of proceeds of the collection goes to
organizations supporting the HIV/AIDS movement.
“Our core activities mostly revolve
around raising awareness among youth and educating volunteers from around the
world about how to make fun and effective campaigns to use back in their own
countries. This is big job and we work in diverse ways to keep the message
fresh and relevant, that is one of our signature traits,” said Murk.
Safe
Sax co-founder Chris Wilkerson said his company supports not only HIV/AIDS awareness but
also an openness in discussion of all things usually quieted in society, which
is exemplified through the transparency of their fashionable bag designs. Safe
Sax bags are transparent bags, coming in all types of designs, on of which
including bags with usable condoms lined on the sides.
“The idea is really about being open,
and about what you have open and transparent for everyone to see,” said
Wilkerson.
One of the most popular campaigns is
(RED). (RED) partners with brands
such as Converse, Apple, and Starbucks to help spread awareness by giving part
of their (RED) products proceeds to HIV/AIDS relief organizations. According to the (RED) campaign’s
website, close to 190 million dollars was raised by the purchase of (RED)
products and was given to the Global Fund to help eliminate the virus in
countries like Ghana, Rwanda, and South Africa. It's important to see that people can make the biggest
difference in the smallest ways; simply by going out out and buying even a cup
of coffee from Starbucks can save a person's life.
For me
personally, I think that by going out and buying these products we can truly
make the world of a difference. Consider where you spend your $20 dollars before you purchase
the next pair of kicks, t-shirt or rubber bracelet. Even in doing so, that’s only the monetary contribution.
We as young people should
keep the conversation going, not ignore the subject, and understand why wear
these cloths, in order to make the ultimate fight for the cause.
The AIDS Walk took place in New York on Sunday May 20, 2012. While every
participant walked for a different reason, they all walked for the same
cause, which was support the fight against AIDS and HIV. Check out the video I shot during Aids Walk NY 2012 "Stories From The Walk". Hope to see you on the walk in 2013!
--Kyle Sweet
GET
DOWN Youth Blogger
kylesweet2013@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
On Sunday, May 20th,
approximately 45,000 people converged in the streets of Manhattan for the AIDS
Walk NY, and I am honored to have been one of them. Walkers and wheelers of all ages and all ethnicities trekked
10 kilometers through Central Park and around the West Side, each of us with
our own stories in every step.
We passed
volunteers who shouted at us from the opposite side of the caution tape to
“keep walking” and blew encouraging whistles in our direction. There were also
tourists and NYC residents who joined us for a bit, curious and overwhelmed by
the number of people walking. “What
are you fighting for?” I remember one woman yelling at us from the sidewalk. “It’s the AIDS walk,” a man next to me
answered, “we’re walking for awareness and a cure.”
Photo by Kyle Sweet
Each person had a
story to tell, and we heard a few of them as we stopped to take footage. My fellow intern and walker Kyle, brought
along his camera and stopped to ask questions of people we wanted to know more
about. Some participants were
walking for the twelfth time. There
were families with names of loved ones on their T-shirts, and co-workers who
walked for companies that supported AIDS research. Many walkers with their children and dogs, walked
hand-in-hand, and held up banners proclaiming where they came from, and who
they were walking for. Others,
like me, joined the fight for AIDS awareness recently, and this was our first
walk.
Photo by Kim J. Ford for Lionqueen192 Productions, Inc.
For me, being
surrounded by so many veterans of previous AIDS walks was powerful and also
intimidating. Was my brief
encounter with this passionate world substantial enough that I was qualified to
walk next to people who had seen their lovers and loved ones die from AIDS? I was not alive when many of the walkers
watched half of their friends contract a mysterious and deadly virus. I have no way of knowing the pain fellow
walkers felt when they discovered, years later, that their son’s, boyfriend’s,
or grandmother’s HIV had finally morphed into AIDS, which was, at that time, a death
sentence.
Photo by Kyle Sweet
As I counted the
number of AIDS Walk NY pins on the back of one man’s vest, I was reminded again
of how the fight has changed since the first walk, in 1986. Today, people
diagnosed with HIV who receive treatment can expect to live almost as long as a
person not diagnosed with the disease. However, if a person doesn’t know she’s HIV positive, doesn’t
get tested, or doesn’t tell her partners about the diagnosis, she could spread
HIV by not protecting herself and others. When I think about how little most people know about HIV/AIDS
and the importance of protection, the fight remains the same. Everyone needs to know what happens when
you neglect your body and sexual health, and what fights still need our
attention. Today, there are 33
million people living with HIV, and only 3 million are getting treatment. Even with these statistics,
unfortunately, according to a 2009 National Aids Strategy Coordinating
Committee Report shows that the American
public has become increasingly less concerned with HIV/AIDS.
Yesterday, there
were many, many people who raised money and walked for the cause, but there
were so many more people who were not there. Few of my peers and friends at home and at school knew that I
was walking, and none of them were at the walk with me. In my health class in high school, HIV/AIDS
was a 30-minute PowerPoint lecture, mostly about how deadly HIV/AIDS used to be.
Photo by Kim J. Ford for Lionqueen192 Productions, Inc.
HIV/AIDS
prevention and awareness is not an issue that my friends and I discuss when we
hang out. To our generation,
HIV/AIDS is archaic and a none-issue; most people are under the impression that
AIDS now has a cure. That needs to
change. If we are to live in a
safer, healthier, more conscious world, our generation of YouTube-watching,
Facebook-stalking teens needs to know that kids our age are still being
diagnosed with HIV, and even more of those teens simply do not know how to
prevent the disease or how to get tested. And that is what I walked for Sunday: I walked as a promise
to get the word out, to get my friends to be aware of the current fight, and to
get more young people behind the AIDS fight. Even though I’m not a long-time walker, and even though I
don’t have as many stories to tell, I was as much a part of the AIDS Walk as
anyone else because I’m determined to get the word out.
Remember: no
matter how you get down, protect yourself. Get tested.
