(USA Today) -- Thursday is World AIDS Day. Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 60 million people have been infected with HIV and nearly 30 million people have died of HIV-related causes. Here in the U.S., more than 56,000 million Americans continue to be infected with HIV each year.
But there is good news to report. Thanks in large part to education and prevention efforts as we reported last year here in Kindness, HIV infection rates have declined by almost 20% worldwide over the past decade, according to the United Nations.
Here are several ways folks are working to keep a spotlight on this issue along with ways you can help continue the progress made this World AIDS Day and beyond:
- On World AIDS Day, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will premiere Home, a new hip-hop dance inspired by the personal stories, photos & essays of the ten people impacted by HIV: the winners of the "Fight HIV Your Way" contest.
This is the first time Ailey is presenting an original dance to recognize the continued HIV epidemic. Dec. 1 is also symbolic for the dance company, in that it is also the day that the company's founder, Alvin Ailey, passed away from the disease in 1989. Home will premiere as part of Ailey's New York City Center season and will be performed across the country on the Company's 2012 U.S. tour.
- This World AIDS Day, December 1, Bono's ONE and (RED) will join together to launch the (2015)QUILT (www.2015Quilt.com) - a social media initiative designed to bring people from all over the world together to fight for a historic achievement - the virtual end of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and the delivery of the first AIDS free generation.
- The (2015)QUILT draws its inspiration from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, created in 1987 to fight prejudice and raise awareness for the disease. The Quilt now contains more than 94,000 names, weighs 54 tons and is the largest community art project in the world.
- Anyone can create a panel by using the simple online tool available at (www.2015Quilt.com) and then share it with their friends and family through Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Before uploading a panel, you will be asked to pledge support for delivering an AIDS free generation.
Options include:
- Join ONE (www.one.org), invite your friends to join ONE and together press policymakers to act
- Buy one (RED) gift this holiday (http://www.joinred.com/red/#shopred)
- Make your own commitment to help deliver an AIDS free generation by 2015
- MTV Staying Alive will be hosting a World AIDS Day event -- Shuga Talks -- in which dual screenings of MTV Staying Alive's Kenyan TV drama Shuga will be held in Washington D.C. and Nairobi.
Audience members - those attending in person and watching from home - will have the opportunity to participate in a live video discussion via satellite, engage with other young people around the world via social media to address key HIV and AIDS issues highlighted in the show.
The show will be streamed live at www.mtvshuga.com/shugatalks, with the second series, Shuga: Love, Sex Money, to premiere on Valentine's Day in 2012.
- The Coalition for National HIV Awareness Month is hosting a telebriefing on the eve of World AIDS Day to announce the launch of National HIV Awareness Month in July 2012, when the International AIDS Conference will take place in the United States for the first time in more than 20 years.
July 2012 also marks the second anniversary of the release of the United States' first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy by President Obama. For more information, visit the Coalition's website.
(USA Today/Kindness)