New Stars Shine

A HUGE Happy New Year! 2018 is a big year for Youth Stop AIDS, we plan to demand extra funding from DFID for AIDS medication and education in February, as well as bombard the Amsterdam Government meeting with all things powerful and youth-led to make sure our MPs are saying the right things in aspect to funding for HIV/AIDS.   With this in mind and more, the year kicked off to a great start, as a society in Brighton we achieved our developing status award, which was a challenge considering it was a brand new society in a very naive area (believe it or not). We also signed on new members at the Brighton SU Refresher's Fair (go us!). Kennedy, 25 from Kenya. In February it started with the Speaker Tour Event! A fantastic opportunity where selected speakers travel all over the country in a month speaking at various events about their own personal stories. On the 7th February, it landed in Brighton. A great chance for the society to get it's first official event, and ...

Hello! It has been a whirlwind of a month. I wanted to focus my attention on the new society that has opened up in Brighton: Youth Stop Aids. For those who are familiar with my blog, I have been working with YSA for a while now and decided it was time to take the leap and start my own society at University. Not the easiest of options as you can imagine, with a week, packed schedule of 32 hours work, full-time university and a home to care for, it was definitely a challenge. With the help of James Cole, Restless Development officer, I managed to format a plan of how I was going to start this. And through this, I thought it'd be good to share a few tips on how to set up a society: 1) PROMOTE! A society can only be successful if it opens up that way. The best way to start my new society was to join one of the biggest students Freshers Fair, in Sussex. Taking place at AMEX stadium, it was the perfect location to pitch up a table and raise awareness. 2) DRAW THEM IN! I t...

Hello everyone! Apologies for the delay in recent blogging. Unfortunately I have been experiencing long term back problems, and in May it finally meant I could get the operation to restore my spinal disc. This meant I was pretty much unable to do a lot for a few months. However in that time I did manage to meet a few people from Youth Stop Aids, and give a few updates on what is happening. For those of you who don’t follow my blog, Youth Stop Aids is an organisation which tackles issues facing young people suffering from HIV/AIDS, targeting the stigmas society holds against these people. Not only this, but as a group we help fight the large organisations that hold the medicines people have a right too, we support those suffering and promote testing for all. By doing all of this and more, we hope to end AIDS by 2030! So I have recently decided to join up with Youth Stop Aids in Sussex. With their help my aim is to bring a new society to Brighton University, which...

On March 16th 2017, a collective of intelligent, passionate young people came together in support of Youth Stop Aids. Youth Stop Aids is a movement campaigning to end AIDS by 2030. As a brilliant man once put: 'In the face of the grave threat posed by HIV/AIDS, we have to rise above our differences and combine our efforts to save our people. History will judge us harshly if we fail to do so now, and right now' - Nelson Mandela (International AIDS conference, 2000) With DFID Minister. 17 years on, and we are still campaigning, still raising awareness and still reducing the stigmas around HIV/AIDS. New infections fell by 38% and we are no longer referring to HIV/AIDS as a death sentence.   I ventured to London on the 16th March, arriving fairly early on a sunny London morning I was greeted by a sea of volunteers, we each shared our stories on why we were here and why we think it was important. The campaign this particular day was called, 'It Ai...

Hello! Courtesy of Chanelle Manton photography Courtesy of Chanelle Manton photography Last week I went to an interesting panel named 'Aids Activism', the idea behind this was a Q+A and a open panel discussion on HIV, the movements that have been done around this and discussing the stigmas connected with HIV/AIDS, especially as last week was World Aids Day, it seemed fitting. Sussex, Stop AIDS and LGBTQ+ organised the event, which took place at the Sussex University campus (came with free wine!) with a fantastic panel of speakers including: The speakers + organiser Hugh Stirling and members of the Youth Sussex Stop Aids and Ellie Priest (member of LGBTQ+ community (Courtesy of Chanelle Manton Photography) Courtesy of Chanelle Manton Photography Edwin J. Bernard Edwin is the global co-ordinator of the HIV Justice Network, based in Brighton but with an international reach, which focuses on ending the inappropriate use of the criminal law to regulate...