Fight HIV stigma with new edu site
Donation protected
My name is Junior Maxwell and I am an LGBT/HIV activist from Manchester, UK.
Ever since I was very young, at the age of 14, I found myself exploring the LGBT community and I was befriended by several HIV+ people in Manchester. They taught me right from wrong, the importance of getting tested, they educated me on the awful stigma that currently surrounds HIV and also the struggles they have been through since being diagnosed. I have heard and witnessed several horror stories, from diagnosis through stabbings to diagnosis through GBH, one thing we always assume as HIV negative people is that HIV is contracted through unprotected sex which I have learnt, isn't always the case.
For the last 12 years I have been learning and getting to grips with the daily struggles a HIV positive person will typically have to deal with and as a HIV negative person, the education for me is endless. Mainly the stigma which seems to be the ultimate issue today. HIV to this day will still effect your dating life to a huge extent, people are still being discriminated in the workplace for their HIV positive status, people are still asking HIV positive people 'are you clean?' rather than 'can I ask what your status is?' Some people will just simply run away from you in the street in fear of contracting the virus.
HIV can also have a profound effect on your mental health and can induce anxiety and depression. Not so much because of the health aspects of HIV, more so out of worry of what people might think of you.
Some people are stronger than others, others feel like their is no way out. There have been many HIV+ people I have spoken to over the years and a lot of people, particularly HIV negative people are still under the impression that HIV is a death sentence and that it is easily contracted. This is simply not the case anymore and we want to educate the uneducated and bring this information to light.
Our Project - The short term goal
- We want to bring in a new website providing everything there is to know about HIV in hopes to educate people to improve the living of HIV+ people by helping reduce the stigma
- We will interview HIV+ and HIV- who has been effected by HIV or the stigma of HIV in some way and take countless of testimonies and make sure they get heard
- The site will include a blog with daily updates to keep the site fresh and new
- We will provide assistance and help people find the support they need from a professional and point them in the right direction. Whether it be counselling, testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis or advice
- The main focus on our site will be about the stigma and making sure we provide further education on topics such as, an undetectable viral load, PEP/PrEP, HIV neg/positive relationships and what we can do as a community to support HIV+ people to live better and happier lives without the need to worry how people perceive them to be. .
Anybody can create a website, we need the funds to make sure that this our cause reaches the masses, we need to fund our promotion, our search engine optimization, we need graphic designers on board along with experienced webmasters. In order to do this we need your help!
We want to be there for our community and stand by those that stood by me and gave me a sense of self worth when I was just an insecure teenager, in order to do this we need your help in order to put this project together.
I have a small team of volunteers behind me who are happy to be committed to this project and we want more than anything to be able to touch the lives of those currently living with HIV today.
Our long term goal - Expansion
Right now we are solely focused on our new site and what we can do to educate people, in the future, depending on how our site does, we may expand in to a registered charity but we must at first take the necessary steps in order to make sure our project is executed the right way and not to run ahead of ourselves. Ideally if our site is a success and we have enough interest and traffic, we will re-evaluate our position in 12 months time.
To kick this off though, we need your help first!
Help us put an end to this stigma HIV+ people have to wake up to every day, their lives are just as precious as ours and they are in need of our support.
Ever since I was very young, at the age of 14, I found myself exploring the LGBT community and I was befriended by several HIV+ people in Manchester. They taught me right from wrong, the importance of getting tested, they educated me on the awful stigma that currently surrounds HIV and also the struggles they have been through since being diagnosed. I have heard and witnessed several horror stories, from diagnosis through stabbings to diagnosis through GBH, one thing we always assume as HIV negative people is that HIV is contracted through unprotected sex which I have learnt, isn't always the case.
For the last 12 years I have been learning and getting to grips with the daily struggles a HIV positive person will typically have to deal with and as a HIV negative person, the education for me is endless. Mainly the stigma which seems to be the ultimate issue today. HIV to this day will still effect your dating life to a huge extent, people are still being discriminated in the workplace for their HIV positive status, people are still asking HIV positive people 'are you clean?' rather than 'can I ask what your status is?' Some people will just simply run away from you in the street in fear of contracting the virus.
HIV can also have a profound effect on your mental health and can induce anxiety and depression. Not so much because of the health aspects of HIV, more so out of worry of what people might think of you.
Some people are stronger than others, others feel like their is no way out. There have been many HIV+ people I have spoken to over the years and a lot of people, particularly HIV negative people are still under the impression that HIV is a death sentence and that it is easily contracted. This is simply not the case anymore and we want to educate the uneducated and bring this information to light.
Our Project - The short term goal
- We want to bring in a new website providing everything there is to know about HIV in hopes to educate people to improve the living of HIV+ people by helping reduce the stigma
- We will interview HIV+ and HIV- who has been effected by HIV or the stigma of HIV in some way and take countless of testimonies and make sure they get heard
- The site will include a blog with daily updates to keep the site fresh and new
- We will provide assistance and help people find the support they need from a professional and point them in the right direction. Whether it be counselling, testing, pre-exposure prophylaxis or advice
- The main focus on our site will be about the stigma and making sure we provide further education on topics such as, an undetectable viral load, PEP/PrEP, HIV neg/positive relationships and what we can do as a community to support HIV+ people to live better and happier lives without the need to worry how people perceive them to be. .
Anybody can create a website, we need the funds to make sure that this our cause reaches the masses, we need to fund our promotion, our search engine optimization, we need graphic designers on board along with experienced webmasters. In order to do this we need your help!
We want to be there for our community and stand by those that stood by me and gave me a sense of self worth when I was just an insecure teenager, in order to do this we need your help in order to put this project together.
I have a small team of volunteers behind me who are happy to be committed to this project and we want more than anything to be able to touch the lives of those currently living with HIV today.
Our long term goal - Expansion
Right now we are solely focused on our new site and what we can do to educate people, in the future, depending on how our site does, we may expand in to a registered charity but we must at first take the necessary steps in order to make sure our project is executed the right way and not to run ahead of ourselves. Ideally if our site is a success and we have enough interest and traffic, we will re-evaluate our position in 12 months time.
To kick this off though, we need your help first!
Help us put an end to this stigma HIV+ people have to wake up to every day, their lives are just as precious as ours and they are in need of our support.
Organizer
Junior Maxwell
Organizer
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