SOCIAL AID :: As vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Canadian AIDS Society I want to share with you some of the work we’ve been doing leading up to this important time of year, and invite you to join in. As we all know, Canadian HIV/AIDS Awareness Week is here, World AIDS Day is Thursday (related events) and so my colleagues and I at the Canadian AIDS Society want you to get out and Do Something!

December 1st is often marked with a variety of events, including vigils, the World AIDS Day Gala, awareness campaigns and many other activities. World AIDS Day is especially poignant this year as we commemorate two milestones: the 30^th year of HIV, with the first reported case documented in 1981 and the Canadian AIDS Society 25^th anniversary responding to the epidemic.

Recognizing the importance of these anniversaries, CAS expanded its World AIDS Day activities this year by launching an exciting month-long social media campaign earlier this month. You can actively participate in the key messaging and social media activities leading up to December 1st. By participating you’ll be engaging both yourself and your peers on important issues affecting Canadians living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, as well as increase awareness to our friends all across Canada as well as on an international level.

Here is how you can spread the word:

1. CAS World AIDS Day Website: Promote the CAS World AIDS Day website. This website has all of CAS’ World AIDS Day Do Something themed activities which include a new daily action-oriented activity, youth-focused educational activities, information on our video competition (prizes, people!), and the chance for you to check out our snazzy campaign posters, Facebook Avatars and badges.

2. Twitter: Follow @CDNAIDS. Use our hashtag #DoSMTHG in English and #AGISSONS in French. We can provide you with our list of tweets or make up your own spreading the word about HIV/AIDS in Canada and World AIDS Day. Follow and retweet what you like, using one of the hashtags.

3. Facebook: “Like” the CAS page. We will have daily updates with our messages and activities and we encourage you to ‘like’ our posts and discuss your views by leaving a Comment. Save one of the Facebook Avatars from our World AIDS Day website and post the photo on your Facebook Profile or even make it your own Profile Picture! You can inspire others to get connected to the campaign by updating your status with one of our Tweet messages or sharing your own HIV/AIDS awareness message and linking to the CAS World AIDS Day site.

4. Make a video and enter our Youtube competition: CAS, in partnership with Abbott Laboratories, is hosting a video contest with two categories: one for youth between the ages of 13 and 29 and a general category for all Canadians. It’s as simple as making a 30-to-90 second video on what HIV means to you and submitting it. Plus, there are awesome prizes to be won (including an iPad!) and your video will be uploaded to the CAS website and shared on the contest’s official Youtube channel. Check out the World AIDS Day website for more info.  Submit your video here!

5. LinkedIn: Join the Canadian AIDS Society group on LinkedIn and share your story about HIV/AIDS in Canada and what you are doing about it.

- Just Rick

XO

FLASHBACK 2012 :: At this feel-good time of year, we just had to revisit what had to have been one of our most popular posts this year. Have a look and you’ll know why…

SOCIAL MEDIA :: Recently when Rick Johnston shared his post about the anniversary about his HIV-diagnosis on Facebook, his mother commented (above). What she didn’t realize is this inadvertently meant all her friends in the small town in Nova Scotia where she lives would also see her son was HIV-positive:

SCOLDING :: When I read here on GGT about the American soap opera General Hospital airing a story where HIV was being used as a deadly weapon via a needle full of infected blood, as an HIV-positive person I had to respond. What are the writers of that show thinking? Seriously! I love a good soap but to sensationalize something that is already stigmatized and rampant with discrimination using more improper information – that society has already been riddled with since the early 80’s – blows my mind! Purposely using something as serious as HIV and AIDS to (I guess?) ‘hopefully’ maintain a dying viewership is lame to say the very least. To take HIV, a virus from which most don’t die anymore, and instill even a slight amount of fear into a mainly unknowledgeable middle-American viewership is out-and-out disgusting!

I would consider myself to be the last person to wish anything ill on someone’s livelihood, but as we have seen with the cancellation of many soaps already, if General Hospital continues to carry on with this storyline, I hope that it is as deadly to this show as the storyline in giving people who may not know any better such terrible misinformation.

LEMONAIDS :: One of my favorite songs by Queen. “These are The Days of Our Lives” was one that, for the past six years, I used as a reflection of what life was for me before HIV. At this time of year – the anniversary date of my HIV diagnosis – I find myself thinking of this song and reflecting.

This year is different for me. Though I still live the song, it is no representation of the reflection that I have about my being HIV-positive. I find that I now reflect on how my life has changed, hugely and for the better. I would not change a thing! I think of what I have done in the past six years, the experiences I have had, the people that I have met and the love that I feel in my heart. I don’t know how different my life would have been but I certainly know that it wouldn’t have been the same if I wasn’t set on the path I began six years back.

Like the man on the soap opera says, these are the days of our lives. I embrace them.

Live, love and laugh peeps!

Xo

Rick

KEEP READING :: Rick Johnston – Graphic HIV

THANKSGIVING :: Never having met a camera he doesn’t like, Rick Johnston adds his voice to our Thanksgiving Week focus here on GGT, sharing the one thing he appreciates every year at this time:

Related :: What Richard Ryder, Eddie Stone, Miss Raquel, Jennifer Breakspear and Philip Tetro are thankful for this year.