CARISSA MARSH
A&E Editor
When Elizabeth Price visited Nairobi, Kenya she met a family in which four out of the five family members were infected with HIV. The youngest, a 3-year-old girl, had not contracted it during birth and was spared her mother’s disease.
While the parents of the little girl were glad at least one of their children had escaped the disease, it was a bittersweet relief. Though the child would not die of AIDS like the rest of her family, one day too soon she would be left alone, still affected by the disease as an orphan.
“It was just really hard talking to the family,” said Price, senior international relations major and co-leader of the student group Acting on AIDS. “It just really broke my heart.”
This broken-hearted feeling for those suffering with acquired immune deficiency syndrome has led Generation Y to tackle arguably the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time: AIDS.
For many reasons — compassion, knowledge, global awareness and even popular
trends — Generation Y has made a shift in its perception of AIDS, no longer viewing the disease as a personal health threat but rather as an opportunity for global activism and change.
“We’ve grown up knowing what AIDS is,” said Tiffany Gee, senior liberal arts major and president of International Justice Mission on campus. “Everyone’s told us it’s a global issue and something that needs to be taken care of.”
Due to aggressive education and awareness campaigns following the initial identification of the disease in 1981, most Americans would say they have a pretty good handle on the disease. They know what it is, how it is spread, what they can do to protect themselves and where to seek treatment if they become infected.
Generation Y has shifted the focus of AIDS education from personal health to global activism.
“At first, everyone was freaking out trying to figure out what it was and why these people are getting all these really rare diseases and dying,” said Dustin Long, a senior biology major and co-leader of Acting on Aids. “It was out of control and a lot of people were concerned about getting it. A lot of that fear factor and mystery has been reduced.”
Unfortunately, the rest of the world is not so lucky.
Though AIDS is a relatively young disease, it has done severe damage to communities across the globe, particularly in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which have 64 percent of the world’s HIV cases.
In the time it took for an American generation to develop awareness about AIDS, a generation of victims were claimed in Africa, Asia and Central and South America.
In just 25 years, AIDS has claimed the lives of more than 25 million people worldwide and has orphaned 15 million children.
“It takes a generation or so to calm down, learn about it and figure out, ‘OK, what’s going to be our response?’” Long said. “But in that time it sure spread like wildfire.”
World Vision, a Christian relief organization that works in six continents, gives another way of digesting the staggering statistics: Every week, AIDS claims as many lives as American fatalities in the Vietnam War. AIDS is waging a deadly and indiscriminate war, hitting people of every age, sex, race and background.
“I think a lot of it has to do with how AIDS is not just affecting the people who have it now, but also their families and the orphans,” she said. “That’s what it took to wake up the world to see the huge crisis this is.”
According to a December 2006 UNAIDS report, 40 million people around the world are living with HIV. In 2006, four million people were newly infected with the virus and three million people died of AIDS.
For Savannah Overton, a senior intercultural communication and sociology major, the statistics are unacceptable.
“If it affects one person it affects us all, and that’s enough for me to say we need to find a way to stop this,” said Overton, co-director of public relations and affairs for the Wishing Well Initiative, a student group dedicated to bringing clean water to Africa — a basic need also connected to the AIDS problem.
Africa is not the only country devastated by the disease, however, as infection rates are skyrocketing in China, India and Russia. While death rates have significantly decreased in the United States since 1995, the Center for Disease Control reported 42,514 new cases of AIDS in 2004. In the same year, nearly 13,000 people in the United States died from the disease.
Because the need for knowledge about HIV/AIDS in the United States has largely been satisfied, Generation Y has been free to recognize the pressing needs in other countries. Price explained that Generation Y has been confronted with a variety of major global problems, including global warming, poverty and hunger, and said that issues like these “have reached this crescendo and we really can’t ignore them anymore.”
While America tends to underestimate the AIDS problem within its own borders as well as the stigma that still exists, Americans are increasingly looking outward to help others overseas and Gen Y is leading the pack.
“It’s always been students who get riled up about things, good or bad, and push things forward,” Long said.
Because of increased knowledge about AIDS, the personal health threat that once gripped the country has subsided. In its place has formed the desire to help others, to essentially spread knowledge through global activism.
“In the last two years we’ve seen a positive increase in social awareness and an attempt to solve social injustice,” Overton said. “This time period said we need to act now and we need to act fast. People have been paying more attention.”
Part of the reason people having been paying attention is that the Internet has made the world a smaller, more accessible place. Technology and resources have cultivated a sort of hyper-awareness about global issues and a strong ‘I can make a difference’ attitude among college students.
“Information and awareness leads to activism,” Gee said. “With information at our fingertips we can be more active.”
Long noted that while the rise in volunteerism has been a product of Generation Y’s international perspective as well as society’s compassion for the needy, it is also a consequence of trendy, celebrity-backed movements such as the One and the Gap’s RED campaigns.
Overton said she is hopeful for the future but is fearful that the trendy aspect of the social revolution will end and people will stop living up to their global responsibility.
“I think it’s an individual thing,” she said. “It can’t just be about going to the Gap to buy a sweatshirt.”
Though some people might view the push to help Africa and end the AIDS pandemic as a passing trend that might sadly die, Gee does not worry about what drives donations or activism.
“Even if it’s trendy, as long as people help that’s what matters,” Gee said.
But for people like Long, who visited Africa twice, participation in the fight against AIDS is more than a passing fad.
“There are so many causes out there, but the one that you really find yourself dedicated to is the one that you have a personal connection to,” he said. “Having the opportunity to use your talents and show your compassion is what really keeps me involved.”
03-01-2007