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Community engagement: Raising awareness about HIV
In collaboration with the North East organisation Blue Sky Trust, researchers based at Northumbria University have signed up to become HIV Champions.
“An HIV champion is someone who is passionate about changing the way people view HIV and people living with HIV”.
Part of this 1-year commitment is to conduct a few small acts that contribute to raising awareness about HIV by wearing the red ribbon and having informal discussion to tackle ignorance and stigma about HIV. Anyone can sign up via the Blue Sky Trust website (https://www.blueskytrust.org/get-involved).
As part of this initiative, we organised a fundraising event at Northumbria School of Design to mark World AIDS Day on Friday 29th November. The aim was to raise awareness about improvements in medication and life with HIV whilst collecting funds to support the local charitable organisation Blue Sky Trust who provides training and supports people during their HIV journey.
During the day, we also supported the Eyes Open ‘Let’s Nail HIV Stigma’ campaign that aimed to get as many people as possible to paint a finger nail Red ahead of World AIDS Day (1st December). Pictures were shared on social media using the hashtag #LetsNailHIVStigma to encourage discussion with a greater number of people.
