WAD Up! is wrapping up

WAD Up! is finally wrapping up, and the team would like to heartily thank all of you who contributed your interesting and personal perspectives on HIV/AIDS, PLWA, and the challenges involved.

Check out the myriad of entries sent in by writers from all walks of life in the blog posts here! Do keep a lookout for our exciting projects in 2008! We will definitely be sustaining our efforts and seek to reach out to even more people. Looking forward to WAD Up! with you soon!

(If you’re interested in getting involved, be it in HIV/AIDS or in other areas – btw did you know we’re doing Pangea Day in Singapore? – get in touch! opportunities@syinc.org) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . ..  . . . . . . . . .  . .  . . . . .  . . . . .  . . . . . .

Thank yous: Sherman Ong, Piya Sorcar, Cheryl, Tian Kai, Titus, Will, Chris, Jonathan, and the HPB folks Francis, George, Tricia. Most of all, every one of you who generously shared your thoughts on this collaborative space!

HIV Patients Deserve Respect Too

HIV/AIDS first pierced my consciousness as a bolt out of the blue. In November of 1991, Earvin “Magic” Johnson – he of the irresistible “no-look pass”, bright, infectious, and winsome smile, and a much-loved gifted NBA star, and most significantly this then-young basketball fan’s idol – went public with the announcement that he had tested positive for HIV

The HOPE Concert Experience

Safehaven and FCC have done it again!

They put together a blockbuster event which wowed the audience throughout. I can’t say I’m surprised though, after witnessing the impressive variety show they organised around Christmas last year. However, this time, it was a paying crowd and there was no buffet spread to help entice the GLBT community out of the woodwork.

Healthy but not Unhurt

Perhaps you might don’t know how is the feeling, now, I am going to tell you how I feel when my eldest brother told me this worst news that I have ever heard in my life.

Last year August, my eldest brother messaged me that my 2nd elder brother (29 years old) was tested with positive HIV in a blood donation test.

The first thing that I felt

HIV/AIDS TRANSMISSION AND STATISTICS IN AFRICA – Data for Digestion

HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. A member of a group of viruses called retroviruses, HIV infects human cells and uses the energy and nutrients provided by those cells to grow and reproduce. AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a disease in which the body’s immune system breaks down and is unable to fight off certain infections, known as “opportunistic infections,” and other illnesses that take advantage of a weakened immune system.

When a person is infected with HIV,

Quartering.

Quartering. It’s what many of us do to survive. We divide, sector and chamber life. We contain emotion from thought, the hypothetical from the current, the past from the present. We create distinctions to survive. When we do not, things bleed into each – we see causal links less clearly; we misjudge. Without them, we mistake the past for the present; we create causal fallacies. We inaccurately assume certain physical diseases to be instantiations of moral infirmity.

When does ever physical suffering call out for another to correspondingly create even greater emotional suffering? What right do we have to indulge in causally fallacious assumptions which yoke physical disease to a moral stain? What right do we have to remove logical distinctions to segregate others instead? How many times are we blinded to the injunction “to aid” embedded in AIDs itself?

Anonymous, 22.

Waddup with WAD Up!

Welcome to our collaborative space for WAD Up! Singapore

So what’s this all about?

WAD Up! is an innovative online multimedia initiative looking at HIV/AIDS through the eyes of young people in Singapore. Using web2.0 tools like Facebook and Youtube, it combines the technology of digital media, the creativity of artistic expression, and the power of personal experience – to tell our own stories about AIDS. In conjunction with World AIDS Day, 1 Dec 2007.

Get the full story here.

Do your bit!

HOPE concert tix!

Appealing to the Singaporean in you: Get your FREE tickets to the HOPE concert in Singapore worth $28 each! It’s all happening THIS Thursday 13 Dec 2007 –

“Dirty”

Aids has been long seen as a deadly disease contracted by people who are “dirty”. However, instead of discriminating them, we should put ourselves in their shoes and understand what it is like to make a mistake which could never be changed. Not all HIV positive victims contracted it from sexual intercourse, some were simply born with it. It is tragically sad but true which brings us back to the point, of helping them instead of discriminating them.

Ben Tan, 18, student

Truth be told

- it has never occurred to me that people suffering from AIDS also have to suffer from discrimination from their own community and even their own family and