News Архив |
октябрь, 2009
|
EECAAC sessions: new experience, successful experience
As part of the Youth Village Y-PEER network at the Eastern European and Central Asian AIDS Conference (EECAAC), the project held an interactive session with goodwill ambassadors. The Youth Village volunteers and guests were welcomed by a well-known TV journalist Vladimir Pozner, DJ Feel, an HIV-positive activist Svetlana Izambayeva and a PR Director of the Radio ‘Europe+’ branch in Volgograd Vladimir Umnov. This was one of the most popular events on the agenda of the Youth Village, and its success was tremendous.
A small room with dance4life info-displays, flags and banners was full with people. The presenters – Vladimir Pozner, Svetlana with a baby on her lap, DJ Feel, who came just for an hour before departing to London’s ‘best DJs of the world’ party, and Vladimir Umnov awaiting his debut as a goodwill ambassador in Volgograd – sat on a sofa facing the sessions’ participants. It was impressive that the goodwill ambassadors found time in their busy schedules to take part in this event, but even more impressive was WHAT they were talking about and HOW they shared emotions. Without any instructions from our side, they sincerely spoke about the importance of the involvement of celebrities in tackling the acute social problems. The session was very informal. Vladimir Pozner started the conversation with the discussion of issues that were important for everyone: who are goodwill ambassadors, what is their input in the fight with HIV, how can celebrities impact the work of governmental structures in HIV prevention, what is the procedure for involving ambassadors and working with them.
DJ Feel, in his turn, shared his impressions about the shooting of a video clip for the dance4life track recorded together with Vladimir Pozner, talked about the role of the club culture and its influence on young people, discussed the input that musicians could bring into the fight with the HIV epidemic.
Svetlana Izambayeva shared her own experience of living with HIV and highlighted legal issues that HIV-positive people face in Russia.
Vladimir Umnov, as a representative of the new dance4life group of regional ambassadors, gave examples of activities to be initiated and implemented as a joint effort of regional teams and the ambassadors. It’s significant that the Russian goodwill ambassadors are ready to provide financial support to social projects by donating income from their concerts, parties and sales.
These very different, very captivating stories, as well as sharing of precious experience and opinions made up for an intense session and brought the relations with the dance4life project ambassadors to a new level of cooperation. We call it a real success!
‘Music is the universal language of mankind’, said the American poet Henry Longfellow Another important session, the visitors were interested in - "Club subculture and social project" -, opened a new approach of disseminating information about health of young people.
This approach is based on quite a trivial concept: in an atmosphere where they feel engaged, free and ready to communicate, young people are more ready to receive reliable information about ways to protect their health. They take part in such activities as special actions, body art with project logos, etc.
The presentation highlighted best practices of cooperation between NGOs and organisers of club events – people whose paths seldom cross, but only at the first sight! For example, during the Electronic Music Festival ‘TSEKH’ the project reached around 5000 people.
dance4life in numbers
dance4life Russia video
FOCUS-MEDIA
Public Health and Social Development Foundation
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