World AIDS Day
December 16th, 2009This post was written by Jane. You can read more posts by: Jane or more posts in Campaign News
With World AIDS Day done and dusted, here are some of things you did…
Leeds Stop AIDS had a very successful World AIDS day, raising over £730 throughout the day with a Balloon Pop Raffle, in which people paid £1 to pop a balloon and win a condom or a prize that had been kindly donated from local businesses. The money was also raised from ticket sales to the World AIDS Fundraising party which took place in the evening. 90 people turned up and there was live jazz, funk and soul bands playing motown with free sushi for all guests and an auction in which we sold a Wing Walk and eligible bachelors who all came with a meal for two.
Manchester Stop AIDS had a World AIDS WEEK! On the Monday they screened a film called ‘Angels in the dust’. On WAD they had a joint bake sale with UNICEF and raised £400 altogether, teamed up with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi, transsexual society) for a candlelit vigil and showed ‘HIV and me’ the Stephen Fry documentary. On Wed they teamed up again with LGBT and had a talk from a local HIV charity (George House Trust) and a reggae night after, where they raised £60. Finally on Friday they teamed up with a lots of societies and had a ‘Giving Aids a face’ fashion show, with fair trade chocolate fountains, bhangra performances, saxophone performances, barber shop quartet. Here’s a link to a short video of it http://gallery.me.com/abhi.mittal#100017. The event raised just under £1000 for scholarships for kids in Swaziland.
Newcastle Stop AIDS Society held its annual “Elephunk Raveyard” night where a total 6 local bands played to a very excited crowd. They also teamed up with the Humanitarian arm of the Afro Caribbean Society and held a WAD Red and White party at a local nightclub. Attendees were treated to a champagne reception and as the venue filled up, the speaker of the night Matthias Schmid, a Newcastle University academic who specialises in HIV/AIDS took to the stage. A host of issues on HIV/AIDS were discussed and lots of people signed action cards as well as the A3 Pharma scrolls.
In London we had a purple ‘Big V’ double-decker bus which had a state of the art digital communications suite. We invited young people from all over London to come and join us and record their own World AIDS Day message.
We also had the Minister Mike Foster MP attend the event. He said “The Department for International Development will continue to call for the pharmaceutical industry to engage with the UNITAID patent pool to help make effective HIV treatments, particularly for children, available and affordable for people living in developing countries”.
