Youth Stop Aids- Goals!

Hello everyone!



Apologies for the delay in recent blogging. Unfortunately I have been experiencing long term back problems, and in May it finally meant I could get the operation to restore my spinal disc. This meant I was pretty much unable to do a lot for a few months. However in that time I did manage to meet a few people from Youth Stop Aids, and give a few updates on what is happening.


For those of you who don’t follow my blog, Youth Stop Aids is an organisation which tackles issues facing young people suffering from HIV/AIDS, targeting the stigmas society holds against these people. Not only this, but as a group we help fight the large organisations that hold the medicines people have a right too, we support those suffering and promote testing for all. By doing all of this and more, we hope to end AIDS by 2030!
So I have recently decided to join up with Youth Stop Aids in Sussex. With their help my aim is to bring a new society to Brighton University, which is in drastic need of awareness. Previously having no society that tackles with HIV/AIDS specifically, I felt this would be the clear route to go.
I met with the Youth Stop Aids co-ordinator James Cole, and the Sussex President of Youth Stops Aids, Abbie. Together we discussed some of the issues that have been raised, and what the next year will hold for YSA. I felt it was necessary for this blog to also know this information, the more awareness the better (see the theme here…)

‘We are urgent on ending AIDS by 2030, there
 will be 1 million more deaths if response isn’t taken’ 
–James Cole, Restless Development, July 2017.

The reason for this? Recently we achieved a massive step in the development of medicines. Meaning that those suffering with HIV can now control the virus to prevent further spreading. However, with this in mind, it seemed the government decided to pull out of the issues. This means we have no department personally tackling HIV/AIDS in DFID (department for international development).
Through this, our response was to urge DFID to release a stock take review. Which, coincidently, they were against taken stock actions as the report might bring something up. We set out to put an enquiry in parliament for this action, a select committee job to hold the department to account. This public enquiry into DFID pulled us into finding evidence of their funding, and sent a response letter to Prita Patel to explain the funding situation. Concluding that DFID should be funding to the advancement to medicines to HIV/AIDS. Our aim was to push DFID into releasing the stock take review for the public to view.
In conclusion, we hired a consultant and did the stock take review ourselves for them, which is now in the final stages, and we should receive a clear explanation any day now.

As great as this achievement was to finally have access to DFIDs stock take reports, however with this in mind, we are now faced with the fact that DFID couldn’t do the stock take reports themselves. This questions the importance HIV is to DFID, or their lack lustre approach to support us.
YSA will be relaunching next month with a tonne of new and exciting events happening. With these events are aim is to tackle some of the new subjects coming up:
-How much money is actually going into HIV/AIDS aid?
-Where is the transparency to find what programmes and funding are taking place?
-HIV/AIDS funding and programmes are combined within education- how can we know exactly what is being taught/done explicitly for HIV/AIDS?
We also are aiming to ask DFID to include HIV/AIDS strategies within girl’s education, with the extra support that will come, it will also bring a larger awareness spectrum. DFID currently have different strategies on women and girls, youth aid etc. But HIV isn’t mentioned in any of this, and there is no longer any strategies whatsoever on AIDS. DFID wrote this new agenda last year, which means it is close to a new one being written- and we would quite like these strategies put in place!

Overall Youth Stop Aids is prepared to kick some metaphorical butt and make movement on causes so dear.

If you are interested and would like to know more please visit our site:
http://youthstopaids.org/

Until next time!

xoxo

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