Rachael Crockett, member of Edinburgh Student Stop AIDS Campaign writes about their amazing launch event for the Why Stop Now campaign…
Today marked the launch of our World AIDS Day campaign and we’re asking “Why Stop Now?”
As a long standing member of the Edinburgh Student Stop AIDS Campaign I have been to my fair share of actions, but this one rocked! We kicked the day off occupying outside the library armed with banners, blueprint cakes and paint – time to get m
essy! Urging the UK government to show leadership in the AIDS response by developing a blueprint mapping how they will lead both in the UK and globally.
Dressed as David Cameron, we asked the public of Edinburgh to make our “own blueprint” out of blue hand prints as a fun and easy way for people to get involved in the campaign which we will take to our MP’s next week when we visit their surgeries in constituency. As well as the hand prints we got lots of action cards signed which will be added to the masses of others collected from all the other Student StopAIDS campaign, UEAM, Medsin and Sexpression societies all over the UK to send to parliament. We even got the attention of two local media journalists after sending out press releases earlier in the week, who were really impressed with our passion and enthusiasm despite the chilly Edinburgh temperatures! We finished on a high with a big photo stunt where “David Cameron” and the rest of the society posed with our banners and placards that we posted on twitter and facebook to go with all the tweets and posts we were sending throughout the day so that everyone could get involved. What a fantastic day!
The campaign is simple. We’ve come too far in the AIDS response to turn back now and a tipping point in the HIV and AIDS epidemic is now within our reach. We need to keep HIV on the agenda and see the scale up in investment we need so that tipping point is passed saving countless lives and billions in future investments. We have the science and the knowledge- we now need the political will.
We can’t let the efforts of the last 30 years be in vein. We need to keep fighting and ask “Why Stop Now??”
Check out how you can make a difference and join the conversation at whystopnow.org #WhyStopNow and get involved – its simple!
Alongside groups like Medsin, Sexpression and UAEM, you can take part in our campaign competition. Be in with the chance to win prizes, by racking up points for the most creative campaigns, for photos, media interest, MP engagement and blogs. Get in touch if you’d like to get involved!