Archive for January, 2008

Snowblower enters its second year
HEALTH / Gay men’s health festival offers 34 events in Feb

Ottawa’s gay men are hell bent on turning February from drab to fab. And it’s all in the name of being healthy.

As the whole-person health approach takes hold in Ottawa, the way Ottawa’s queer community tackles men’s wellness is changing. Nowhere is that more evident than Snowblower, a month-long health festival that’s as much about parties, friends and hookups as formal health workshops.

Now in its second year, Snowblower blends nights on the town with outreach work. A handful of the 34 events are aimed at men living with HIV/AIDS, the Asian men-who-have-sex-with-men community, gay seniors, trans men and other subgroups. Others cast the net wider, such as Social Acupuncture, a barrier-breaking party at Shanghai Feb 6.

Adam Graham, the gay men’s prevention coordinator at the AIDS Committee of Ottawa, is hard at work promoting Snowblower.

"Gay men are prone to feeling socially isolated," says Graham. "If we accept that social inclusion is part of gay men’s overall wellness, then bringing people together like this makes sense."
FROM capital EXTRA! READ ENTIRE ARTICLE  HERE

(this picture has nothing to do with this story)

For my first foray into the blogsphere, I was thinking about direction – where I should head with it and that led me to where BeOneCity should go, what we make our priorities, where we steer this ship as we begin… 

Designing, building and launching BeOneCity has been a big, wild, sometimes stormy adventure.  It’s been exciting and scary and wonderful.   We set out on a course not really knowing where we were going and what it would look like – exactly.   I, the designated ideas man, had chartered the course with some determined inkling of what we should do and how.  Looking back, a shit load of that was so obviously wrong, I can only laugh at myself. 

Nevertheless, here we are and it is shaping up to be great.  Still, we are fresh and a work in progress… so be patient with us – let us know what is not working or what bugs you. 

The intention we began the site with was to make BeOneCity something very real and very useful and important to gay guys with HIV and something really fun and even amazing – a place you want to be hanging out, a place to meet people and a place that changes things in a good way.

Since you are part of  BeOneCity now, you are the person who knows best both what that means and if we are on the right track or not.   We’d like to take some direction from you since we made it for you-  so please talk to us and let us know what you are thinking and where we can do it better –  or what we should just get rid of – and why in 30 words or less…. And yes, tell us your great ideas and partner with us in it.

There’’s a new public service announcement on HIV/Aids on Chinese TV. Starring Jackie Chan and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it features a man and a woman spinning through the air in a not-so-subtle combat which includes elements of courtship, foreplay and climax. The ad ends with Chan saying: "In life, we need to be safe. Life is too good. Please protect yourself." Sounds promising? Actually it’’s a remarkable distillation of everything we know that doesn”t work in the fight against HIV/Aids.

More than 25 years into the global Aids epidemic, one thing we”ve learned is that you can”t fight HIV through artful, oblique messages approved by government ministries and broadcast on television. Where HIV prevalence has declined, what has made the difference is frank, specific discussion about HIV, why people are at risk and what can be done to avoid infection. Grassroots, community-led efforts which empower those at highest risk have been critical, and the emergence of an organised, vocal civil society, advocating an end to sexual violence and access to information, condoms, clean needles, and medicines, have changed the face of the epidemic in many countries.

While the Chinese government has taken some steps in this direction, too much of the response remains style over substance. Those groups most vulnerable to infection – injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and sex workers – are still routinely harassed and abused by the police, and driven away from the information and services that could help them. Aids activists continue to be detained, intimidated and prevented from speaking out.
READ REST OF ARTICLE

DNA mags newest coverboy, Skye Boyland
(yes, that’s his real name)

Agence France-Presse
First Posted 20:54:00 01/17/2008

ADDIS ABEBA — Ethiopia is implementing an action plan against AIDS that sets 2010 as a target for providing free retroviral drugs to all HIV-AIDS sufferers who need them, a senior health official said Thursday.

Meskele Lera, deputy director of the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office, said a number of other measures would be put into place as well, including wider use of condoms and more testing and awareness-raising.

"One hundred percent of the people in need will have free access to treatment by 2010," Lera told Agence France-Presse at the launch in Addis Abeba of a multi-sector plan of action for preventing and treating AIDS.

Continues… READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

This is great news, could have come sooner…

-dave

Wow! Thinking about Brazilian summer right now…….