Social Justice#2 by Katharine Mehta
Dear Blog,
Today I went to ‘Aid for AIDS’ with Lenny, Jasper and Adam. We were picked up in a car and driven over to 110 Wall St. The same place we went to last time! What we did this time was similar to what we did last time, though I realized a few things when I was there. When I was there, it didn’t matter if I actually was getting down, dirty and working with the patients. As long as we could help out some way, more work could get done by the actual employees! I figured we probably couldn’t really work with the patients because of our age, if I could work with them I definitely would I just think it might be tough to do because I am not sure what big of a difference I could make personally. I started thinking after I left Aid for AIDS about education about AIDS awareness. I started thinking a lot about this because the only way to really prevent AIDS, is by education. I then decided to look up AIDS awareness organizations. I then found this one organization called ‘Nine and a half minutes.’ When I first saw the name I was kind of scared because it sounds like kind of a creepy horror movie. But it turns out this organization is really involved in teaching about AIDS awareness, It is a very informative website because they showed the simple ways that one can protect themselves from AIDS. I think that an awesome slogan is ‘ABC.’ This seems odd because it’s just letters but, ABC stands for Abstain, Be faithful and Condoms. To clarify they are saying abstain as abstaining from sex, being faithful to one partner and condoms are just a good thing to use to prevent many diseases! Why this organization is called nine and a half minutes is because of a very interesting fact. Every nine and a half minutes someone in the USA is infected with HIV. This is shocking, because that would mean 1,400 people are infected with HIV daily! I started thinking about that I really didn’t know how HIV is transmitted from one person to another. I decided to research it and I found a link, which looks pretty reliable. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_HIV_transmitted. The main ways of getting HIV include: having sex with an infected partner, Intravenous drugs and a few other ways.
My goals for next time include asking the following questions: Do you educate children and adults about AIDS? Do you give out free condoms? How do you suggest our generation prepare for stopping the spread of AIDS? Is AIDS more common in adults? What is the life expectancy of someone with AIDS? How do you feel the spread of AIDS affects the youth of America? Can you transfer AIDS by making out with someone? Can lesbians get AIDS? Is it more common for gay men to have AIDS?
I found a few other random links
P.S I went shopping after and I was very happy.