There are a number of things that you (and your UNYSA branch if you are involved in one) can do to take part in this campaign. Listed below are some ideas for you to take up personally, as part of a team, or as part of your local/university branch. You can also find out why it is so important to get campaigning now, by looking at the facts below. To find out more - follow the links below.

get campaigning now!

Campaigning is at the heart of the efforts of the StopAIDS Campaign. Only through campaigning can issues be brought to the forefront and policies changed.

• Write to your local MP and ask what action they are taking and encourage them to bring up HIV/ AIDS issues in Parliament. Hand-written letters are much more effective than e-mails and usually get a quick personal response. Click here to find out who your MP is.
  
• Visit the Stop AIDS website and register your support.
  
• Volunteer your services with a number of organisations. Many welcome even half a day per week and the experience gained is very useful. Use the links listed below to look for active organisations in the UK.

awareness raising

This is essential if campaigning is to be successful. Bringing HIV/ AIDS issues to the forefront of the minds of the general public, students, school children and MPs is crucial. Further, informing the public about HIV/ AIDS issues is essential in the fight against ignorance and prejudice. There are a number of ways in which you can bring these issues to general attention:

• Street Actions: Use leaflets and set up eye-catching stalls in your local area to encourage questions from the public.
  
• Set up a stall at your students union and provide information to spark up conversations. A stash of condoms is often a useful accessory!
  
• Sell t-shirts at your stall with the Stop-AIDS logo on, or make up an eye-catching one of your own.
  
• Wear all red on World AIDS day – again, this invites questions and informs people about the campaign.
  
• At the start of World AIDS week, put up a banner in your students union on which to write different statistics about AIDS every day. You could invite students to write their opinions and thoughts on this banner to make them feel involved.
  
• Organise talks from people within the organisations involved with StopAIDS and use the speakers from the speaker tour if they are coming to your university.
  
• It is a sad fact, but people often need incentives to go to talks, demonstrations, evenings, etc. Perhaps offer a glass of wine, a red ribbon, money off a club night, or even a condom!
  
• Direct a production of “The Vagina Monologues” – you can make this relevant to the campaign and it is highly entertaining too!
  
• School visits: this is perhaps one of the most useful, effective and rewarding ways in which to raise awareness. Many schools welcome visits from young people who are naturally good at communicating with younger students. Offer to take a citizenship class, lead an assembly or to start some workshops. Different schools respond to different methods so it helps to be flexible. School children may also feel more comfortable about talking to students about sexual health issues: ask your local nurse or health centre for advice on talking about such issues. Perhaps visit a school in the middle of World AIDS week so that the lesson can be combined with events taking place in their area.

student Stop AIDS campaign

The Student Stop AIDS Campaign is a coalition of youth and student campaigning organisations who are calling on the UK government to meet its own target of achieving universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010.  The campaign has supporters at 120 universities across the UK.  The tour is co-ordinated by Student Partnerships Worldwide (SPW), an international development charity that recruits and trains young adults (aged 18-28) as volunteer Peer Educators, to lead programmes that address urgent health and environmental issues in Africa and Asia.

useful links

Stop AIDS Campaign website

UN AIDS - The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, is the main advocate for global action on the epidemic. It leads, strengthens and supports an expanded response aimed at preventing transmission of HIV, providing care and support, reducing the vulnerability of individuals and communities to HIV/AIDS, and alleviating the impact of the epidemic. Live and let live was the slogan of the two-year World AIDS Campaign 2002-2003, which focused on eliminating stigma and discrimination.

Health & Development Networks is a non-profit organisation with substantial experience in managing and moderating electronic discussion forums and providing communication support to conferences. The mission of HDN is to mobilize a more effective response to HIV/AIDS and other health and development related issues by improving information, communication and the quality of debate.

Aids.org makes access to HIV and AIDS information on the Internet faster, easier, and more accurate and connects professionals and the public to share their knowledge and experiences.

The National AIDS Trust (NAT) is the UK's leading HIV and AIDS policy-development and advocacy organisation. NAT works in the UK and internationally for policies that will prevent HIV transmission, improve access to treatment, challenge HIV stigma and discrimination and secure the political leadership to effectively fight AIDS.

World AIDS Day - Stigma and discrimination are recognised as major factors fuelling the global HIV epidemic, creating a climate of fear and ignorance and a reluctance to confront rising infection rates.

Body and Soul is a UK charity supporting children, teenagers, women, heterosexual men and their families who are living with or closely affected by HIV and AIDS. Body and Soul is unique in the UK in providing support independently to young people and children and is at present in contact with and offering support to over 1400 adults, 300 teenagers and 600 children.

Crusaid is a leading UK charity devoted to fundraising on behalf of people living with HIV and AIDS.

Avert is an international HIV and AIDS charity based in the UK, with the aim of AVERTing HIV and AIDS worldwide. AVERT has a number of overseas projects, helping with the problem of HIV/AIDS in countries where there is a particularly high rate of infection. Through their highly successful web site, www.avert.org, they take education and information to people in almost every country in the world.

www.Nam.org.uk is an excellent source of information on HIV/ AIDS.

Student Partnership Worldwide invites young people worldwide to play a leading role in tackling health and environmental threats in rural Africa and Asia.

The facts...

• 8000 lives a day are claimed by HIV/ AIDS in the poorest countries in the world.

• Over 40 million people are living with AIDS.

• In 1999 three times more people died from HIV/AIDS worldwide than from war, murder and violence.

• 14 million children have been orphaned by AIDS (with the loss of one or both parents).

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is not only getting worse in developing countries. The UK is facing an increase in the number of cases contracted every year.

One person is diagnosed as HIV positive every three hours in the UK (the majority of whom have contracted HIV through heterosexual intercourse). 6000 new HIV infections were recorded in the UK in 2002. In 2005 more people were diagnosed with HIV in the UK than in any previous year of the epidemic and the number of people living with HIV in the UK increased by 11%. HIV/ AIDS is crippling many developing countries and pushing others further along the road to destitution. It is important, however, to recognise the efforts being made on an international scale to stop this epidemic.

• The declaration of commitment on HIV/ AIDS, adopted by the world’s governments at the special session of the UN General Assembly in June 2001, marked a decisive step in the battle against HIV/ AIDS. For the first time there existed a universal set of time-bound targets to which the United Nations and governments could be held accountable.

• There is tangible evidence of the progress that has been made since this declaration on a world wide scale. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, forty countries have now developed national strategies to fight HIV/ AIDS (three times as many as two years ago) and nineteen countries now have national AIDS councils (six times the number since 2000).
  

• While more countries are adopting national strategies to tackle the situation, the main problem is the lack of care and support to people living with HIV/ AIDS. At the end of 2001, fewer than 4% of people in need of antiretroviral treatment in low and middle income countries were receiving the drugs.