Speakers offer personal insight in an attempt to educate, heighten awareness

Every 24 hours, 15,000 people are infected with HIV.\nIn three days, the equivalent of the entire student body at IU would be infected with the virus.\nTo lower that statistic, Bloomington will honor World AIDS Day today, which marks the eighth year the city has participated in the world-wide initiative to heighten awareness and teach prevention of HIV and AIDS.\nTonight, the World AIDS Day Interfaith Service of Remembrance and Hope, sponsored by the Community AIDS Action Group, will consist of speakers whose lives have been affected by AIDS in different ways. Pat Muyskens, co-coordinator of the service, said she hopes the speakers will significantly impact those who attend.\n"I think that when any situation is personalized, people care more," Muyskens said. "If they don't have a face or a name to put with a disease, they can ignore it. (AIDS) has to be personalized in order for people to be touched by it."\nJunior Katie Dillard, who has been an AIDS activist since reading Ryan White's biography in eighth grade, said AIDS activism usually only focuses on America, and the most important aspect today is the global focus on the disease and efforts to combat it.\n"For a lot of people, the goal is to remember people who they have lost and loved," she said. "They will try to make their passing not in vain by doing something proactive."\nProactive efforts worldwide will focus on this year's theme "AIDS: Men make a difference," but in Bloomington, the theme has been changed to "AIDS: We all make a difference."\nAnne Reese, director of health and wellness education at the health center, said the theme was changed to better fit the community.\n"We thought (the original theme) was a little limiting," Reese said. "We do really believe that everybody makes a difference, and we get around having to address the issue of blame. It's a chance to get together and support each other in the work that needs to be done."\nThe growth of the disease has spawned a growth in AIDS research, and while medical treatment has improved in America, Dillard said the unfortunate consequence of this improvement has been a decline in the attention on the disease. She said especially in Bloomington, it is difficult to remember other countries don't have the same resources as Americans.\n"One of the most interesting things is that so many people in school and higher education have (information) available and know how to protect themselves," Dillard said. "They assume that's what everybody has, and that makes people lackadaisical about going out and continuing to fight HIV and AIDS."\nJosh Cazares, co-coordinator of the memorial service and the chairperson of CAAG, has worked closely in AIDS education since 1989. He said World AIDS Day is an opportunity for him to help put the disease at the forefront of people's minds.\n"My most powerful experience (involving AIDS) was helping a friend of mine who wasn't really close to his family to deal with his death and dying," he said. "Seeing him watch his life just evaporate before him taught me just how precious life really is. It's so easy for us to take so many things for granted. It's so important that young people understand it's a preventable disease and they don't have to die."\nTo visually promote Cazares' message, the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave., will host the seventh annual "A Dance of Love" Saturday night at 7 p.m. Scott Jones, co-creator of the production, is thrilled to help in the seventh showing of what has become his obsession.\n"When we first started doing this, we had the idea of bringing together artists who wanted to express their own sense of loss because AIDS had hit the artistic community so hard over the years," Jones said. "It then became a way to bring all those people together in a communal effort -- actors, jazz singers, composers, dancers...we have a little bit of everything. That's been one of my primary focuses, to have as much of a variety as possible and to get artists involved with each other."\nMuyskens said she is proud of the evolution of World AIDS Day from the first one in Bloomington eight years ago. She said today should always serve as a reminder of how far we have come and how far we can go in reducing the pain caused from a disease that does not discriminate.\n"It would be great if World AIDS Day could turn into an annual celebration for the cure," she said.