Jasper Stallings, 3/16/10, AIDS Walk

On March 16 I went to the AIDS walk office building with Matan, Lenny, Adam and Alma. On this visit we planned to have our interview with Shaun Shepard one of the head organizer of the New York AIDS Walk. We prepared some questions to ask Shaun about his work at the AIDS Walk.  Listed are a few of the questions that we asked Shaun Shepard in our interview.

. Personal connections with HIV/AIDS: Shaun had a Cousin born infected with the HIV virus.

. Organization’s linked to Aids Walk: the most important partner of the AIDS Walk is the GMHC (Gay Mens Health Crisis), Duane Reade, the Gap, Macys, and about 30 other AIDS service organizations

. Importance of AIDS Awareness: Aids is an epidemic. It doesn’t affect one group but it affects the whole world. None of us are immune to it so we all need education and awareness about it.

. How much money does the AIDS walk bring in every year: in 1986 it raised $710,000 and in some of the more recent years it has raised as much as 105,000,000.

. Shaun’s job at the AIDS Walk: He supervises and hires workers and also supervises what jobs each worker is doing.

. What do you think is the most shocking statistic about AIDS/AIDS Walk: In some AIDS Walks there have been 50,000 walkers and only 24% of them fundraised. The other 76% might have thought that their money would go to the pockets of the people in charge of AIDS Walk. Also, Black Women between the ages of 15 and 24 are the biggest victims of HIV/AIDS.

After the interview we went back to work putting all of the boxes of posters into lines according to what type of poster was in the box. After aligning all of the full boxes we got to have a little bit of fun looking around the room for empty boxes and getting to stomp on them so they could be recycled. I think we all learned a lot on this visit.