As I mentioned in a previous post, there seemed to be a lot of visual arts components of the AIDS conference, whether it was aimed at raising awareness or used as an income generating activity for people living with AIDS.

My favourite!

Graffiti ribbon in the Youth Booth, part of the Global Village

The Empower project’s Kumjing dolls from Thailand traveled to Mexico to raise awareness of migrant workers.

Outside of the conference, at the cultural centre in Zocalo, there was a great exhibit on migration. Migration is a significant factor in the spread of AIDS.

The centre also exhibited a public health project for rural women — participants were given a disease to study and then had to make a larger-than-life crafty representation.

The Bead for Life booth in the Global Village had bustling sales of their paper necklaces made by poor women in Uganda.

Fancy Stitch is another income generating project for low income women in South Africa with amazing AIDS-based needle work. It doesn’t look like you can buy these ones, but they’ve got other products for sale online.

One of the friends I made a the conference from the large Canadian contingent works on Body Mapping where HIV positive people use self portraits to explore their status.

More on the Reaching Millions: Youth, AIDS and the Digital Age session for MobileActive.org.

Here at the AIDS Conference, with sessions for more than 20,000 people, attendees have to choose their time wisely. I find myself often wishing that I could be in two places at once, and struggling to decide whether I should go to the sessions on topics I know nothing about, or those that I’ve already got an interest in. Should I go for the big names or the niche experts or the hands-on activists? In keeping with the dominant theme at the conference, I’m taking a combination approach.

Monday started with the big names, including a session with Bill Clinton, full of metaphors about us foot soldiers having to slay the dragon of AIDS in the absence of a Saint George equivalent. Those who know me will understand that I like anyone who makes a Saint analogy. The content was fairly rhetorical, and could have all been found on the Clinton Foundation website. In the stereotypical American way the former president ended his speech with a “God Bless You!”

In the afternoon there was a great session called “Reaching Millions: HIV, Youth and the Digital Age”. The head of Voxiva spoke about a project in Rwanda called TracNet that helps the Ministry of health use mobile phones to collect data on ARV roll-out and a new partnership with Carso Institute in Mexico to support people living with HIV/AIDS using mobile phones (for example, daily dose reminders). TakingITGlobal (who does the Youth Force site for the conference) and the Global Youth Coalition HIV/AIDS spoke about their social networks that connect and provide information for young activists. A young woman called Thembi from Cape Town presented clips from her audio journal that track her journey through AIDS diagnosis and living positively which are available at www.aidsdiary.org. We also heard from Punto J, a dynamic site in South America to help youth access info about HIV/AIDS and sexuality, with lots of comics, etc. Finally, loveLife from South Africa’s new mobile phone project (very low bandwidth) was presented as an alternative to web-based engagement in the face of SA’s high mobile phone use among youth (74 percent own a mobile) versus internet (6 percent of youth access the internet regularly).

On a personal level, attendance at this conference is like stumbling upon that perfect article for your research that you didn’t even know you needed, but making the transition from learning to action is the hard part. I keep on thinking, “What now, what next?”

(I have been recording most sessions so I will have audio files if anyone wants them)

First impressions:

 So excited to be a part of this conference.  Like two years ago, its just AMAZING to have so many people working for change in one spot.  Getting to know the four activists in our little group at the hostel, and so excited to learn about each of their projects (body mapping, harm reduction, youth and community health, and the internet…more later?).  We made it as far as the Global Village and checked out the various booths.  The craft-based approach to awareness and income generation caught my eye the most, including a project that aims to put a human face to migration statistics by creating papier mache migrants (ultra visible).  Their dolls even have passports.  I am still not quite sure of the goal/outcome, but the brochure is in my bag along with tons of other things to read.

We have been insipred to have a collaborative craft for a cause for event…stay tuned!

HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly understood as a disease of poverty, inequality and marginalization.  In this conceptualization, some groups and individuals are more at risk for infection than others as a result of their place in an “environment of risk” that affects vulnerability beyond individual behavior.

This study assesses the impact of grassroots microeconomic development projects on reducing the environment of risk for adolescent orphans living in slum areas of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It looks at a group of HIV-affected adolescents who inhabit multiple vulnerabilities as a result of their age, socio-economic status, proximity to HIV/AIDS, and often their gender. Through the CAPAIDS Safe Livelihoods project, this group received vocational training and micro-finance to help reduce their vulnerability. This case study suggests that these types of projects can increase income and income security, provide alternatives to risky employment, decrease dependency, reduce community stigma, improve social networks, and raise self-esteem for participants. As a result, microeconomic empowerment is an important new tool in the battle against HIV/AIDS.

Link to full article based on my thesis research in Ethiopia here (6 pages).