HIV and AIDS has been a growing concern in today’s society.  AIDS Community Resources (ACR) is doing what they can to slow down the rising numbers of infected people.   The ACR created a speaker’s bureau to educate the communities in CNY about the virus, beginning with the children.

“One of the reasons why we bring speakers to class is to give the disease a face,” Jana Gaeta, 28, Teen AIDS Task Force coordinator said. “Once you meet people living with the disease you can sort of imagine the disease.  You see the face of the disease and you can identify.  You understand it and it becomes more personal.”

The presenters tailor their message to fit the educational needs of their audiences. The speaker’s bureau conducts presentations to community groups, schools, churches, health care providers, and other organizations.

Gaeta brings the speakers to schools to share their stories of dealing with their struggle with living with AIDS.  The speaker’s bureau is made up of middle aged or older people that are living with AIDS. 

“When you take speakers somewhere, it’s always really important of how old the speaker is because if you bring an older person, the kids are not going to be able to identify with that speaker.  It’s one of my major issues,” Gaeta said. “We’re in need of young speakers.  When you think about it, if somebody gets infected at age 15 or 16, these people are not ready to speak yet.  They’re in total denial and they don’t even want to think about the fact that they are infected, let alone going public with that information.”

Karen Hinson, 45, who has non-progressive AIDS, is one of the presenters who began speaking for the speaker’s bureau last year.

“I came from a predominantly upper-middle class white school and neighborhood in a little town so that’s where put me,” Hinson said.  “I’ve discovered the kids, as smart as they are, don’t know even know what HIV stands for.  They can’t really identify with it.”

This is the reason Hinson started to volunteer as a public speaker.

“I believe they keep asking me back because I don’t preach, I just tell my story,” Hinson said. “I just want them to identify with me.  I was in the National Honor Society, I was involved and I had perfect attendance.  So how did I go from that to this and if it can happen to me it can happen to you.”

Hinson knows what the students will be exposed to when they leave home for college.

“I know when they leave home, the whole world’s going change; the drinking; the club scene,” Hinson said.  “All it takes is one night of getting drunk and hooking up with someone that you know from school and the next morning, regretting it.  If that wasn’t bad enough, god forbid getting infected.  All you can do is hope that if they’re in a situation, something will come rushing back in their memory like, ‘that girl said this happened to her.’”

The speaker’s bureau has 10 presenters but they desperately want young African American women.  The ACR believes that the way they can help eventually exterminate the AIDS virus is to increase the education of the children.  In order to do that in Syracuse, they need younger African American women infected with the virus who are willing to speak out.

“From an ethnicity point of view, if you go to a school that 95 percent African-American you don’t want to bring a white speaker or vice versa,” Gaeta said.

People interested in getting involved in speaking should go into the ACR and fill out a volunteer application with the Director of Volunteer Services, Mary Doody.

“Speakers Bureau was created in the late 80, early 1990’s. It was created to put a face on the HIV/AIDS epidemic,” said Doody. “Speakers talk about their own personal journey and experience. The speakers customize their message to fit the educational requirements the listeners. All of the stories from the ACR Speakers Bureau are exceptionally beneficial to the HIV/AIDS prevention cause.”