World AIDS Day is an opportunity to take action to make AIDS history. The Global Peace Tiles Project invites to you to join us in creating the "visual voice" of young people around the world against HIV/AIDS: host a Peace Tiles workshop, create a mural, and swap tiles. More at makeaidshistory.org
Background
Over the last two years it has been a privilege to work with communities around the country and around the world to help brighten the spotlight on the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Inspired by the extraordinary work of my wife and her colleagues at the
Womens Collective and by Bob Bilheimer's remarkable film,
A Closer Walk, the Peace Tiles project seeks to foster conditions for change -- awareness, openness, and empathy -- so necessary for survival and overcoming.
This year, the aim of the Peace Tiles World AIDS Day effort will be to take what has been learned about what works over the last two years, and channel those lessons back into global visual conversation about HIV/AIDS. This year's efforts begin with the simple premise that, no matter who you are, where you live and how you live, your life has probably been impacted by the global HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Why HIV/AIDS
The reality is that, while some progress is being made in a few nations, to the best of our knowledge the pandemic is worsening. There is good reason for this: AIDS strikes the poor and vulnerable. This means that women and children in Africa are the most affected. Women of African descent are bearing the brunt of the pandemic in the US. Unemployed and youthful injection drug users suffer disproportionately in the Ukraine. Women and girls in India are filling local hospices beyond capacity. At the same time, it appears that diseases like TB and Malaria -- diseases that thrive alongside HIV/AIDS -- are increasingly resistant to drug treatment, increasing the difficulty of treating AIDS.
Objectives
The Peace Tiles project aims to contribute to the struggle against HIV/AIDS in three ways:
- Education: Raise awareness among youths and at-risk populations about the dimensions of the pandemic and how they can protect themselves.
- Expression: Provide a vehicle for anyone, especially AIDS-affected persons, to give "visual voice" to their experiences and share that with others.
- Self-advocacy: Use the collective "visual voice" to people to raise public awareness and seek greater support for local initiatives among decision-makers.
Activities
To do this, the Peace Tiles project will support three principles activities in 2007:
- Workshops: Peace Tiles workshops can be fun, safe, dynamic, educational and therapeutic experiences for participants and coordinators, all depending on the aims of their organizers. In 2007 the Peace Tiles project will seek to support -- through training, communication, funding assistance, in-kind contributions and artist collaborations, 50 workshops around the world.
- Resources: Peace Tiles will offer to provide technical assistance (workshop design), art materials ("kits"), microgrants of approximately $200US, and artist journey to support workshops.
- Tile exchanges: Assist communities connect and cultivate understanding, solidarity and hopefulness around their shared and unique experiences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic through story and tile sharing. The Peace Tiles project will help break common experiences of isolation by facilitating connections within and across communities by making connections and facilitating exchanges of tiles.
- Resources: Peace Tiles will use its online tile "swap engine," its online ecard maker, and tile "kits" to support exchanges.
- Advocacy murals: Raise public awareness, empathy and support for PWAs, their care providers, and their communities by supporting the installation and exhibition of Peace Tiles murals in prominent public venues and the halls of decision-makers. The Peace Tiles project will install at least five murals in five countries for World AIDS Day exhibitions.
- Resources: Peace Tiles will receive, document, curate, prepare, and ship murals to their host sites and offer technical assistance in mounting exhibitions and coordinating openings.
- Fundraising: Through the sponsorship of Peace Tiles murals in places like hospitals, foundations, and policy advocacy organizations the Peace Tiles project will generate income for those communities that contribute tiles to World AIDS Day activities. Sales from products such as cards, stickers, and calendars will produce additional revenue that will be returned to participating communities.
How You Can Get Involved!
- Host a Peace Tiles workshop in your community
- Help us find sponsored Peace Tiles mural sites in your community
- Volunteer to be a Peace Tiles exchange artist
- Sponsor a workshop in a community requesting assistance
- Contribute to our artist travel fund
- Purchase Peace Tiles items at our Cafe Press store online.
- Be a Peace Tiles ambassador and excite others about the movement! email Lars Torres to learn more.
Through these and other activities that may emerge, the Peace Tiles project aims to strengthen hope and resolve at a time when many feel that the campaign against the epidemic is losing ground.
Please join in this discussion around ways to engage more and more people in this year's World AIDS Day Peace Tiles activities. Thank you!
Posted 11/14/07 by
Lars Hasselblad Torres
0 comments
Blood:Water Mission
