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Barcelona Bound: Youth Activists Head For the XIV International AIDS Conference
The Young Face of HIV/AIDS
UNAIDS estimates that approximately 50% of new HIV infections occur in people between 15-24 years old. With that age group carrying such a heavy burden in the AIDS epidemic, it only makes sense to include young people in a conference that designs, implements, and evaluates new programs and policies. Giving young people input into such programs and policies may be the key to making them effective. At least that's what inspires the thinking of the Barcelona YouthForce, the official name of the coalition of young people heading to Barcelona from all corners of the globe.
On the Guest List
The Barcelona YouthForce is composed of eighty activists (including many HIV positive people) from developing countries as well as the U.S and Europe. The attendees will range in age from 12 to 26, and many will be accompanied by their adult allies. These young people will be in important company once they get to Barcelona, rubbing elbows with the likes of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela.
Naina Dhingra, a twenty-year-old senior at George Washington University in Washington D.C., is one of the coordinators of the Youth Visibility Activities at Barcelona. She got involved in HIV/AIDS activism as a high school peer educator in her Connecticut hometown and these days she works at Advocates for Youth, a D.C. area non-profit organization. Last year, while attending a United Nations conference on AIDS, she realized how important it was to get youth involved at the international level. "It was an incredible eye-opener to be in a place with people from so many countries. Once you put us all together, there was tons of energy inspiring us to connect and interact and make a difference."
Dhingra and her YouthForce colleagues have raised funds for Barcelona from organizations as diverse as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. One of their main goals for the trip to Spain is to ensure an ongoing youth presence at International AIDS conferences in the future by establishing attendance scholarships for young people from developing countries.
More Youth Voices = Fewer HIV Infections
"AIDS is the crisis of our generation," says Dhingra. "Every five minutes another young person [somewhere in the world] contracts the disease. That's why we have to be part of the response: listening to young people's voices is the only way to make response policies effective. We're not just the leaders of tomorrow; we have to be involved right now." This belief, that young people should be consulted in forming HIV/AIDS policy and action, is the primary motivational drive behind the Barcelona YouthForce. "We want to challenge our adult allies to think about how they involve young people on the ground, how they include our opinions and voices."
Prevention strategies are another major concern of the YouthForce. As Dhingra sees it, "one of the biggest HIV/AIDS challenges facing young people in the United States and elsewhere is the lack of information about the disease, and the stigma of talking about it. We'd like to get funding for some of the great youth-run organizations that work on issues like this, particularly in the developing world."
On the Agenda
For members of the YouthForce, the events on the schedule next week are a dizzying combination of rallies, meetings, press conferences, networking sessions, and last but not least, some Barcelona nightlife. The YouthForce rally on the opening night of the conference is designed to kick things off with a combination of ten young speakers, high-profile guests like the UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS and the Princess of Cambodia, and a VJ from MTV/Spain to get the party started. A t-shirt campaign will also be launched that night, featuring a special design meant to identify members of the YouthForce so that the other 15,000 conference attendees will be able to recognize them on sight. With all of the participation they have planned, we doubt anyone will overlook them.
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