International Candle Light Memorial Day – the day of action
On May, 16 the M1 TV-channel will place the red ribbon in its right upper corner, the international symbol of struggle against AIDS. Within the day there will be a counter on the screen displaying periodicity with which people in the world die of AIDS. More than 25 million people died of AIDS already, and each 8 seconds the list of victims is replenishing with a new name. The stylized prompts-reminders about ways of protection from being infected are also included into the channel air network.
On the Foundation’s initiative the HIV-positive people from different cities of Ukraine are invited to the live air. Real life stories of contemporaries can have a much stronger influence on the change of the behaviour among the youth, than any informational or advertising materials. The guys, invited to the studio, want to share their life stories, and their destiny divided by the diagnosis on "before" and "after", about the attitude of the surrounding people to them.
The project, launched on May, 16, will not suspend with the termination of the Memorial Day, but will be developing during the whole year. The initiative of the ANTIAIDS Foundation and M1 TV-channel is not simply the action devoted to the concrete date, but the beginning of the realization of a long-term strategy which is determined by a social position of both partners.
Reference
The International Candle Light Memorial Day is marked annually each third Sunday in May. This day was thought up by several Americans who gathered in San Francisco in 1983 to commemorate those died whom they closely knew and loved. One of the signs of memory and solidarity with people suffered from the epidemics is the red ribbon invented by an artist Frank Moore in 1991. At this day there is a tradition of sewing quilts – memorial cloths, scrappy pictures on fabric, devoted to memory of close people. The first memorial quilt was sewed by American Cleve Jones in 1987, having devoted it to his best friend who died of AIDS. Also this day there is a tradition to land trees of memory on a number of years past from the beginning of world AIDS epidemics. In the year 2004 there are already 23 years since the first cases of the HIV infection have been found.
For detailed information, please, contact Pavel Piminov, Communications Director, Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation on e-mail: [email protected]. Contact phone number: +38 (044) 490 4805.
