Featured Items:
Events:
Engage Your Campus
Engage Your Campus
Acting on AIDS exists to create a campus community of activists who put their faith into action in response to the global AIDS pandemic and other issues of poverty and injustice. These communities across the nation join to form a movement that not only transforms individual lives but seeks to transform campuses, communities, society, the nation, and, ultimately, the world. We join together our voices in advocacy, our hands in action and our hearts in prayer.The core of Acting on AIDS is not its campaigns or events. These are merely vehicles to demonstrate our passion to respond to these issues and to inspire others to respond. It is through creative activism activities, advocacy campaigns, and other leadership opportunities that we demonstrate our hearts to follow Christ in response to urgent global issues. As a grassroots movement, Acting on AIDS encourages student-initiated, creative, and unique response. Within the national framework, Acting on AIDS provides creative activism activities, leadership opportunities, and advocacy campaigns to create national synergy and unified purpose. These are intended to serve merely as a catalyst for personal transformation and effective action. We encourage you to get involved in Acting on AIDS’ creative awareness campaigns and to develop some of your own. Whenever possible, we encourage you to participate in these events on the national dates provided. If you cannot participate on the national dates, please contact the Acting on AIDS national team, and we will work with you to develop the activity at a time convenient for your campus.
Do You See Orange?
The goal of the “Do You See Orange?” campaign is to saturate a campus with basic awareness of the global AIDS pandemic through a visual representation of the impact AIDS is having on children in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a terrific way to begin a grassroots campus movement that demonstrates the reality that one out of every 20 children in sub-Saharan Africa is orphaned by AIDS.The beginning of the campaign is announced with bright with orange posters asking, “Do You See Orange?” scattered around campus. A week later, there are orange “Do You See Orphans?” posters and one in 20 students start the day wearing a bright orange “ORPHAN” t-shirt to replicate this statistic on campus.
The “Do You See Orange?” campaign breathes life into basic statistics. Throughout the day, students are surrounded by a live representation of the number of children in sub-Saharan Africa who have been orphaned by AIDS. It also provides a large number of students with an opportunity to initiate a movement while creating a platform to educate students on the global AIDS pandemic and the need to respond.
For more information or to organize, please e-mail Acting on AIDS.
Broken Bread Poverty Meal
The Broken Bread Poverty Meal is a creative activism meal to educate campuses, advocate, and raise resources for those who are broken by the vicious cycle of AIDS, poverty, and hunger. Every day, severe poverty and hunger leave many vulnerable to HIV and AIDS exploit the most, while HIV and AIDS drives those affected much deeper into extreme poverty and hunger. Broken Bread is intentionally designed to give participants an experience through which they identify with families broken by AIDS and hunger, intercede against systems of injustice and oppression, and interact with others willing to make a difference.The links between AIDS, poverty, and hunger are far too common. Approximately 28.4 million of the 37.8 million people infected with HIV live in developing countries. Already, AIDS has killed 7 million farmers in Africa. These deaths mark the loss of much-needed labor and knowledge for families, communities, and nations already affected by extreme poverty and food shortages. With some nations projected to lose as much as 25 percent of their agricultural labor force, one must wonder who will feed the widows and orphans who are left behind.
While AIDS certainly contributes to food insecurity, hunger and food shortages also help drive the spread of HIV. Hunger increases the likelihood that people will adopt risky strategies to survive. Men may migrate to find work and woman and children may turn to prostitution to earn money for food, which drastically increases the risk of HIV infection.
In addition, hunger and malnutrition, coupled with the lack of access to antiretroviral drugs, significantly reduce the life expectancy of people living with HIV in developing countries. As a result, it is increasingly evident that AIDS and hunger are not two isolated issues but that addressing both are essential to effective prevention and care.
National dates for the Broken Bread Poverty Meal include the following:
Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008 (World Food Day)
To organize the Broken Bread Poverty Meal on your campus or in your church, please notify Acting on AIDS at least one month prior to your event date. Acting on AIDS will e-mail you materials and will send you the corn-soy blend (CSB) base for the porridge.
World AIDS Day (Dec. 1)
In 2009, World AIDS Day falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving, which may seem tricky to organize an activity. It is possible, though, and we encourage every campus to get involved! Below is a list of ideas to engage your campus this World AIDS Day. As always, we invite you to be creative, develop new ideas (and share them with the national group!), and take action together to commemorate World AIDS Day!- Lives Are at Stake: Lives Are at Stake is Acting on AIDS’ signature event for World AIDS Day. Campuses will order free picture cards, depicting children from areas with a high prevalence of HIV, laminate them, and display the pictures on stakes or on clothesline in a prominent area of campus. This display serves as a memorial of the impact of AIDS on orphans and vulnerable children. Participants are invited to take a child's photo and commit to spend time praying or reflecting for that child throughout the day. To order your photos, e-mail the quantity you'd like and your shipping address to actingonaids@worldvision.org.
- Want Less/Give More: We seek to engage in advocacy based on four pillars of engagement: social, political, spiritual, and economic. Since World AIDS Day falls at the beginning of the Christmas season, we invite members of the Acting on AIDS network to participate with us in economic advocacy through the "Want Less/Give More" campaign. The goal is to think critically about our spending habits and to become more conscious consumers and generous givers during the holiday season and beyond. Watch our Web site in October for more information. We want to journey together to transform the way we think about our God-given resources and begin to cultivate a sustained response of more deliberate and God-guided stewardship.
- Advocate: Thanks to your advocacy efforts last year, the U.S. government passed the Global AIDS Bill, which allocated $48 billion to prevention, treatment, and care for global AIDS, TB, and malaria. It also includes 10 percent for orphans and vulnerable children. Our advocacy is still needed, though, to ensure the government actually allocates these funds to implement the Global AIDS Bill. In the coming weeks, we will make our advocacy petitions available online. We encourage you to invite students to respond, using their voices to amplify the voices of children vulnerable because of HIV and AIDS.
- Local Events: World Vision is organizing activities in some major cities around the U.S., such as Chicago and Boston. If you live around one of these cities and would like to get involved, contact us and we'll get you connected!
- Create Your Own Event: We encourage you to creatively explore what you can do on your campus and in your community to commemorate World AIDS Day. Please let us know what you are doing, so we can share it with the network. Other campuses may join with you!