World AIDS Day -What can I do?
There are many resources and ideas to support activities around World AIDS Day, including: liturgies and prayers, study guides, fact sheets, poster images, videos, and advocacy ideas. World AIDS Day approaches, more resources are becoming available, including posters and a CD-Rom of materials in English, French, Spanish,and Russian, from the World AIDS Campaign following this year's theme.
Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise
World AIDS Day is a unique opportunity each year for us to reflect on the way that HIV and AIDS affects us personally, our local communities and how we can respond to the global pandemic. You have an important part to play on that day through planning or participating in events at your church, your school, and in your community.
"Leadership" has been chosen by The World AIDS Campaign as the theme for World AIDS Day over the next two years, 2007-2008. This theme will continue to be promoted with the campaigning slogan, "Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise."
The World AIDS Campaign hopes that making leadership the theme for the next two World AIDS Days will help encourage leadership on AIDS throughout all levels and sectors of society and inspire and foster champions within a range of different groups and networks at local and international level.
Faith-based organizations will have a special responsibility to encourage and highlight religious leadership in the response to HIV and AIDS.
Faith-based organizations and churches will have a special responsibility to encourage and highlight religious leadership in the response to HIV and AIDS.
Action
You can make a difference in the fight against the spread of HIV and AIDS! Here are a few ideas to combine with worship, prayer, and learning.
- Find out what your church has said about HIV and AIDS and ask church leaders what they have done to follow up on their statements.
- Learn about the commitments toward universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support made by governments and how you can join in civil society to ensure that effective targets are made and kept. UNGASS.
- Link up to other community events around World AIDS Day. Promote and take part in them. Work with and support networks of people living with HIV and AIDS.
- Help mobilize action in your community - such as a march, vigil, or letter-writing campaign - calling on your national leaders to set clear targets for their commitments on HIV and AIDS and to actively work towards universal access by 2010. Use the posters and other resources from the World AIDS Campaign
- Visit political leaders or write to them to make sure that they are keeping to commitments they have made for the care and support of people living with HIV and AIDS. Lobby them to increase their commitments.
- Join in 16 Days Against Gender Violence, November 25-December 10 as part of an already existing local or national activity or take action on your own. The Center for Women's Global Leadership has an international calendar of activities.
- Write journal articles, letters to the editor, newsletter articles about HIV and AIDS and the role of faith communities.
- Be tested for HIV. It is important for all of us to know our status, so that we can make informed decisions that affect our own health and that of the people we love. Seek out and promote good counseling and confidential testing. This is also an important way for religious and community leaders to break down the stigma often associated with HIV and testing.
Learning
World AIDS Day provides a wonderful an opportunity for a special learning focus on HIV and AIDS in your men's/women's groups, Sunday School, youth groups, schools, and seminaries. (Build on the education about HIV and AIDS you have been doing throughout the year.) Take up the 'Keep the Promise!' advocacy curriculum with young people and adults. Study the facts about HIV and AIDS and learn how campaigning can really make a difference in overcoming injustice. Out of your study and discussion, write letters to you national leaders asking them to keep the promises they have made and do more to meet the promise of universal access to treatment by 2010. An updated version of the curriculum is available in English, Spanish, and French here.
Take up the Keep the Promise! advocacy curriculum with young people and adults. Study the facts about HIV and AIDS and learn how campaigning can really make a difference in overcoming injustice. Out of your study and discussion, write letters to you national leaders asking them to keep the promises they have made and do more to meet the promise of universal access to treatment by 2010. An updated version of the curriculum is available in English, Spanish, and French here.
As people of faith, it is important that we consider the issues around HIV and AIDS from a theological perspective, rooted in our understanding of the Bible and our own faith traditions. There is an increasing body of excellent theological resources for study.
This year, make a promise - and keep it - to recognize World AIDS Day through worship, action and learning. You can make a difference in the response to HIV and AIDS!
