World's AIDS Day: 1st Dec 2011, "Getting down to zero"

AIDS, being such a dreadful disease which has taken the lives of 25 million people in the world, has to be fought against tooth and nail collectively by the human race. The year 2011 marked the vision of "Getting down to zero" which means zero discrimination towards AIDS affected patients and bringing down newly infected HIV patients to zero. SRC in collaboration with GFATM and Concern Worldwide successfully organised AIDS day in XIMB. As our part, SRC made its contribution by conducting an event to spread awareness  in the adjacent slum area. 

                                                                                                                                      

A poster competition was conducted on the theme "Getting to Zero" in XIMB. It was open to all XIMB and NISWAS (NGO) students. The  response from the students alongwith their creative designs was extremely heartening. In the competition,the team comprising of 'Praptasha and Purbasha' clinched the  first place and the team of 'Deepti Panwar & Jayita Das' came second. 

First Prize 

As a new initiative, on AIDS day we  decided to conduct the event in a slum area  so as to reach out to a segment most vulnerable to the disease. This time we zeroed in on a place nearby XIMB, i.e 'Salia-sahi'. The event was kickstarted with a wonderful skit by NISWAS. Their theme was on ‘How to deal with an AIDS patient and how to get zero discrimination for AIDS patients’. 

After that we had a small briefing session by some counselors from OSACS and some volunteers from NISWAS. Next, the team from XIMB performed  a skit with the help of X-stage on the theme ‘Women empowerment to fight against AIDS’. Following that, there was a small video in Oriya on AIDS awareness played on a projector to make the audience perceive and understand better about AIDS and its after effects.

Finally the event drew to a close with the thanks giving vote and distribution of mementos to NISWAS and XIMB representatives by Nithin Gopinadh. The event turned out to be a huge success as was evident in the large turn up from the localities, NISWAS students and XIMB students. We  hope that our event has made an impact in the minds of those people, cleared their notions about AIDS and will definitely play a defining role in the achievement of "Getting down to zero".