Attendees to AIDS Education Month events in June will again have three summit options, in addition to the smaller outreach activities. Everything is free and open to the public.
Last year, Philadelphia FIGHT, an AIDS service organization, experimented with having one large summit. But organizers decided it worked better to have separate spaces for separate topics.
“We had more people than we’d ever had last year,” said Juliet Fink Yates, director of education at FIGHT, “but the content got a little lost, particularly the faith leaders and community summit [information].”
The summits this year include:
• Beyond the Walls: Prison Healthcare and Reentry Summit, June 15 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 13th and Arch streets
• Faith Leaders and Community Summit, June 18 at the Howard Gittis Student Center at Temple University, 1755 N. 13th St.
• End AIDS: The HIV Prevention and Outreach Summit, June 22 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 13th and Arch streets; Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s first transgender physician general, will be a featured speaker.
The opening reception for AIDS Education Month takes place 5:30-7:30 p.m. June 1 at the Independence Visitor Center, Sixth and Market streets. There will also be several smaller events throughout the month, including a Hip Hop for Philly Concert featuring PnB Rock on June 26.
“It’s incredibly important to have this month,” Yates said, “because there are still so many people who live throughout Philadelphia who don’t know enough about HIV/AIDS or, if they do, it’s stigmatizing information.
“We wanted to focus on the local community as much as possible,” she added, “highlighting and presenting the local work that’s been happening.”
All the speakers have a connection to Philadelphia, even if they work in other parts of the country, Yates said.
FIGHT expects to reach about 10,000 people through its 22nd-annual series of AIDS Education Month activities.
For more information, visit www.aidseducationmonth.org.