get involved
July 8th, 2008 by admin
Join the mailing list! To receive one or two emails a week about what we’re up to, details of events and when the next meeting will be, email us and we will be delighted to add you to the list and answer any questions. Or you can subscribe to the list here.
Come along to a meeting: Meetings will be advertised on the website, the Facebook group and through the mailing list – anyone is welcome to come along (including non-students). We’re very unthreatening, I promise!
If you’re interested specifically in one aspect of the campaign (political campaigning, or fundraising, or HIV in the UK or something) then please let us know – we’d be delighted to have people working on specific things. If you think your particular strength lies in advertising (designing posters and stuff) or photocopying flyers, then we’d be particularly happy!
You’re not expected to give up your life for AIDS, just to be a human, and tiny actions have been proven to make a huge difference: Here’s what you can do.
- Write a letter to your local or national MP to encourage the waiving of the TRIPS agreement in countries affected by AIDS (intellectual property laws that enable companies to have a monopoly on producing AIDS drugs that keeps the prices too high). (To find out who your MP is, go to www.theyworkforyou.com)
- Campaigning and letter writing around trade issues: which companies and where they are allowed to produce and provide AIDS drugs are key to universal access.
- Hold the G8 accountable to the promises they made to provide universal access to treatment in developing countries by 2010: sign up to the continued ‘World is Watching You’ campaign.
- Join our new campaign targeted at holding the drugs companies in the UK (such as Kaletra in Cambridge) accountable for their research, pricing, and drug availability.
- See ‘A Closer Walk’, an accessible film narrated by Will Smith and Glenn Close.
- Spread the word amongst friends, family and colleagues. If you don’t have time to do anything, then maybe someone else will.
- Check the associated websites (SPW, stopAIDS, Reuters) for news and developments on the AIDS crisis.
- Even volunteering or sponsoring children (birthday presents for family and friends…): few can do this, but it makes an important difference, and spreading the word might find more people who can. Check out organisations like SPW and the Starfish Greathearts foundation.
- Sign up to our email list and enjoy our films and socials at the same time as making a difference.
- Pledge your leadership to help stop AIDS with the World AIDS Campaign – click the button on the right
To help address the AIDS crisis from a western country, no-one is expecting you as an individual to renounce your lifestyle and live beyond the bounds of your society: there are a few very simple things that you can do, focussed on raising awareness and ensuring that our own government are responsible for their actions. As Healy Thompson from America reminded us in her talk, these do actually have an important impact in many different ways.
The AIDS pandemic is a crisis that will not go away instantly, and the route to a resolution from the point of view of people in Cambridge is simply to consistently plug away at the required elements, maybe taking 20 or more years. Very few people will be in a position to work on an international level, or be responsible in the countries concerned: those that will be should remember the AIDS crisis, and those who won’t are equally useful in the small actions of a long memo.
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