Today is World AIDS Day — a day dedicated to raising awareness of HIV and AIDS. This week is also the third anniversary of the death of my good friend David from the disease. David was my mentor at my first job out of college. He taught me creative problem solving and that nothing can beat a little hard work and great volunteers when it comes to getting a job done.
As David’s illness progressed, those lessons about hard work and volunteering became really valuable. David had incredibly loyal friends who volunteered help him in his last days. Many of his friends and I felt indebted to him for how he improved our lives. We all pitched in to help him at the end of his life, often doing tasks that we would have never expected.
World AIDS Day is more a day of mourning; it’s a day of action and awareness. AAUW advocates for comprehensive sex education, which prevents sexually transmitted infections like HIV. AAUW is supporting women like Ester Casey, who made the film Thing With No Name, a documentary about two Zulu women in rural South Africa with full-blown AIDS. Casey received an AAUW Career Development Grant to continue her study of how multimedia design and filmmaking can communicate across cultural and linguistic barriers, particularly to make healthcare and educational information more accessible to all.
I know I am not the only one who knows how devastating this disease is. Watching someone I loved die such a tragic death is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. But I have hope — AIDS is 100 percent preventable. There are fundraisers all over the nation to help raise money for research and to help people living with HIV and AIDS. Here in Washington, D.C., where about 3 percent of the population is infected with HIV, there are volunteer efforts to educate about the disease and prevention of HIV. There are also international outreach efforts to help people across the globe prevent and fight AIDS. Look for Product (RED) versions of things you may already use; they make it easy to support the fight and raise awareness every day. If you are looking to contribute your own hard work, I know there are volunteer opportunities out there for everyone. Consider what you can do to help prevent HIV and AIDS.
i m touched by this post… this is really difficult to lose any close friend… The aids world is huge social menace and world aids day is a successful contribution to fight against this and to remember those who died with world aids disease.
regards
cleon dann
Thanks for taking time to write this touching and inspiring post. Open, frank discussion about this disease is so important. I’m happy to see all the AIDS-related tweets from a range of folks, from Blair Underwood and Hydeia Broadbent and those closer to me like Christy Jones, a regular blogger for AAUW and Osob Samantar who said “World AIDS Day…spread the awareness and help aid Mama Africa.”