For anyone new to Stop AIDS, the speaker tour is where we bring international speakers to the UK to talk to you about how HIV has affected their lives. In the past this has been an amazing way to really bring to life the realities of what living with HIV means to someone or how HIV can affect whole families and crucially it helps us remember why the campaigning we do is so important.

This year we have the pleasure of bringing over Daniel, Nokubonga and Tony from Sierra Leone, South Africa and the USA. Daniels’ sister was kidnapped during the civil war, she was then raped and contracted HIV soon after. Nokubonga has been really involved with campaigning for access to treatment in Sierra Leone since she found out her HIV positive status; these are just an example of some of the stories they will be sharing with you.

With the speaker tour starting in just 3 weeks it is important that the societies start getting ready to host it, so here is a list of important things to remember to do to make yours the best speaker tour event yet.

- Venue: make sure you get a good venue, not too small but not too big either!

- Advertising: promotion is key to getting as many people as possible to your event – flyer outside the union, ask to say a couple of words before lectures start, put up posters and get all your friends to come down

- Media: write articles for your local papers and union papers, offer them the opportunity to come to the event and take pictures, also remember to get a shout out on your university radio.

- Invite your MP or PPC (potential parliamentary candidate): you can offer them the opportunity to get speak and or chair and have their photo taken!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 3:13 pm and is filed under Campaign News. 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.