Students play role in increasing global awareness of AIDS, HIV pandemic

Senior Katherine MacDonald, a volunteer for Outreach Kenya, has been carrying around a gift bag filled with condoms and conversation hearts since Monday, hoping to get the word out about IU AIDS Awareness Week. MacDonald said she has been pretty successful because her classmates were always curious about the goodies, which were attached to small booklets containing AIDS facts and condom instructions.\n"It's a very important topic because a lot of people have a misconception that HIV/AIDS is not a problem here and they engage in risky behaviors, which propagates the problem," she said.\nThe HIV/AIDS pandemic is a huge issue, said senior Hillary Melchiors, another volunteer for Outreach Kenya, a student-run organization focused on helping Kenyans through partnership and education.\n"It's a way to raise global awareness because HIV/AIDS affects everyone, each of us, no matter where we are," Melchiors said. "We're part of the global community."\nFurther spreading awareness, MacDonald and Melchiors brought their bags of condoms and conversation hearts to the Monroe County Public Library Auditorium on Wednesday night, where they were part of a large group of students and community members who heard Salih Booker, executive director of Africa Action, speak about "Ending Global Apartheid: Africa and the United States."\nBooker sees such worldwide segregation primarily in the inaction of wealthier nations like the United States toward the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Booker said 30 million people in Africa are living with HIV or AIDS, and of those, only two percent have access to anti-retrovirus medications.\n"AIDS makes the system of global apartheid clear," Booker told the audience. "We should be spending money on AIDS, not on war."\nBooker centered his discussion around his idea that America has willfully ignored all things African.\n"Human life began in Africa," he said. "Now the fact that we don't think that way says a lot about the problem and the enormous oppression of our knowledge as a country of African decent." \nA fundamental problem, \nBooker said, is that Americans have a \nmisconception that they live in the most generous nation in the world. However, the U.S. gives only 0.15 percent of its gross national income, a smaller percentage than any other wealthy nation, according to his speech.\nGraduate student Shanna Dietz said she was glad to see so many people show up to hear Booker address issues that some Americans might not want to face.\n"I found it to be refreshing," she said. "These are perspectives you don't hear often." \nShe added that opinions like Booker's are rarely heard because Americans don't like to think of themselves as "the bad guys."\nHIV/AIDS is not just an example of inequality in Africa, Booker said, citing that African-Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 40 percent of the U.S. population \nliving with HIV/AIDS. \nHowever, all is not doom and gloom, Booker said. Africa has benefited in recent years from a wave of democratization and strides toward equality for women. And Africa Action has been committed to working in solidarity with Africans to increase education and treatment for HIV/AIDS, and Booker said he advised the audience to do the same.\n"Citizen activism and activity is effective," he said. "I would encourage you all to get involved and remember that we are all people of African descent."\nDietz said she hoped the audience would not only learn from Booker's message, but also do something about it.\n"Intentions and activism are two different things," she said. "I think it's a step in the right direction to come to things like this, but \nhopefully it leads to other things"