It was a dark and stormy night when Edinburgh’s Stop AIDS Society’s “Faces of AIDS” week wrapped up with CabarAIDS, a vibrant cabaret-style show.

By the end, our “Faces of AIDS” week had; used one stationary bicycle; spanned two weeks; experienced three minutes of break dancing, encompassed four events, caused five individual tears to shed, and answered six questions.

The aim of the “Faces of AIDS” week was to separate and address different “Faces” or aspects of AIDS and HIV. Each event focused on a different “Face” of AIDS; we chose to look at HIV and children, HIV and gender, HIV internationally, and HIV and stigma.

For our children and AIDS-focused event we held an extravagant bake sale to raise money and awareness of children with HIV. It was themed as a kid’s birthday party with fun music and bubble blowing. To fit in a more serious note, we took turns riding a bike and over the course of the afternoon marked off how many children would have died from AIDS since the bike ride started.

Gender issues relating to HIV starred on the film night. We screened the film “Yesterday” which is about the struggles of an HIV positive couple in South Africa trying to cope with life in a rural community. The film night was thought provoking and may have caused some tears…

To narrow down the international perspective to AIDS/HIV, we decided to focus on religion and AIDS/HIV. We held an evening panel discussion featuring four different speakers. Three of the speakers were lecturers from the University of Edinburgh, who had various areas expertise. We also invited the chaplain from Edinburgh’s AIDS charity to speak as a way of connecting the international back to the national.

The grand finale of the week was the CaberAIDS. Featuring the Modern Dance Society and the Break-dancing Society, as well as various singers and actors, CaberAIDS dealt with stigma and AIDS/HIV in an entertaining manner. Actors performed monologues relating to issues of stigma and the dance performances provided an upbeat counterpart. Over a dozen performers and a lively crowd made the evening a great success.

Despite some last minute date changes and other minor hiccups, the week ran relatively smoothly. Now that we’ve done it once, we know we could do it again!

Hopefully, Edinburgh’s “Faces of AIDS” week will get better and bigger.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 5:56 pm and is filed under Society 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.