Facing AIDS in Portland, Oregon

World AIDS Day is tomorrow, December 1, and once again we’re encouraging communities to take part in a Facing AIDS. Ernesto Dominguez, Youth Technology Specialist at Cascade AIDS ProjectExit Disclaimer). We are also providing free HIV testing for youth (and they will receive their results in 20 minutes). Check out our video from last year’s Facing AIDS event:

And we started a campaign to turn Facebook RED in honor of World AIDS Day. We asked folks to maketheir profile image and then share the message with their friends/family. Already we have had close to a hundred organizations including Advocates for YouthExit Disclaimer turn their own profiles RED. Do you have any lessons learned that you’d like to share with other organizations that might be interested in hosting a Facing AIDS event? We found that many people either didn’t know much about HIV or didn’t know that it was still an issue. The Facing AIDS event provided us with an opportunity to not only raise awareness, but to conduct mini HIV presentations. The presentations are group presentations and we will be linking folks to our offices for a full day of rapid testing open to anyone (regardless of risk/gender) and is completely free. We also set apart some time for folks to ask their own questions/learn more specifics if they wanted on a one to one basis. Do you have any other tips or advice? We displayed the Facing AIDS signs for folks from the community to see the impact too as they walked by our office.We found that when we posted the photos on Facebook (with photo consent of course), people wanted to share their images and made them their profile photos for a long time after our event. This long lasting show of support continues as those photos will stay on Facebook and will be a reminder of what was accomplished by one person, with one message and one hope. For more information about CHATpdx or its programs, please visit their Facebook pageExit Disclaimer or contact Ernesto at edominguez@cascadeaids.org.