The annual Philly AIDS Walk brings together people whose lives have been touched by the disease in a sea of ways — and some of those personal stories were on display last week in Rittenhouse Square.
AIDS Fund staged a kick-off event Sept. 21 for the 26th annual Philly AIDS Walk, which will be held Oct. 21.
This year, organizers have taken to social media to generate support for the walk with the Why I Walk campaign, which allows supporters to share their motivation for participating.
At last week’s event, volunteers, staff and audience members were photographed holding pieces of white paper with “#whyiwalk” — the Twitter hashtag — and a message with their reason, for distribution in the campaign. A camera crew was also on hand filming.
AIDS Fund executive director Robb Reichard addressed the crowd at the kickoff with some harsh statistics.
“Every nine-and-a-half minutes, someone becomes infected by HIV in the United States,” he said. “And one in five don’t know it because they haven’t gotten an HIV test recently.”
The kick-off and the campaign are meant to heighten awareness about those numbers, and the reasons why the walk is still integral, said AIDS Fund board president Kevin Blanton.
“We want to raise awareness of the epidemic. We want to be out here in the public. We want to show people where we’ve been, where we’ve come from and remind people that this is still a real problem for our community, for our nation and the world,” Blanton said. “We want to remind people that this is what we’re doing. We want to remind them about the walk and to get people to volunteer, to come out and raise money.”
Another tool on hand to get across that message was AIDS Fund’s timeline of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which marked occasions like the first cases of “the gay cancer” in 1981 and the first time in more than two decades that an international HIV/AIDS conference was held in the United States earlier this year.
Reichard said the timeline, created by agency staff, has been a years-long work in progress.
“It’s been something that has been great to take out and show to the community,” Reichard said. “It always attracts a lot of attention because a lot of the young people don’t know the history and, for a lot of the people who have lived with this history, it is a great reminder of where we were and how far we have come.”
Philadelphia resident Howard Traivers has volunteered for AIDS Fund since 2007, lending his time to efforts like Gay BINGO, in addition to the walk.
He said the timeline is an effective education tool.
“Every time we use this, it gets people really interested,” Traivers said. “They ask a lot of questions.”
Volunteer Kevin James said the timeline symbolizes the work that has been done, and what still remains.
“I think it is a huge testament to how long this has been going on. The numbers and the dates, if you follow them, are a very strong visual impact,” James said. “It’s important because I think now it’s become a little more of a disease that we accept.”
James said he hopes the information motivates people to sign up for the walk and support the cause.
“We want people to walk away with the knowledge that HIV/AIDS still needs to be addressed,” James said. “We still need to work towards creating funding for people, for medication and also for policy change.”
Mazzoni Center wellness counselor Patrick Marcoux said the stigma also needs to be addressed.
“I feel like a lot of the people I work with are still experiencing a lot of shame and fear and they’re afraid to come out [as positive] to their families, to their friends, to their community because they don’t know the reaction they’re going to get,” Marcoux said. “I feel like I am here representing them.”
Marcoux said he is hoping for a day when people will feel comfortable saying, “Yes, I have HIV and it’s OK.”
Nurit Shein, executive director of Mazzoni Center, sought to galvanize the crowd at last week’s event.
“It is unacceptable that in the richest and most advanced country in the world, we are still talking about the AIDS epidemic 30 years later,” she said. “Get angry, get active, get tested and join the AIDS Walk and donate.”
For more information, visit www.aidswalkphilly.com