SGAC holds first ever AIDS walk

After returning from a protest in Washington D.C., this past March, the Student Global Aids Campaign returned with vigor to promote AIDS awareness on a local scale. Now the group is planning a walk throughout IU Saturday to mark the first annual AIDS walk. \nSGAC secretary Huma Ansari said the goal of the AIDS walk is to bring attention to an important issue in the community.\n"Our goal is to get the word out that HIV/AIDS is a problem in the Bloomington community," Ansari said. "It's surprising how many people have misconceptions and how much little people know about the disease, and hopefully, with the walk, we can help to break down barriers."\nAnsari said she was worried about the turnout at first, but after securing a sponsorship, she is glad all the hard work paid off.\n"SGAC has never done anything this large in the community," Ansari said. "Initially, we didn't know what to expect and now it's turned out to be this really grand thing. We're expecting at least a couple hundred or so to turn out and participate."\nAnsari also said Starbucks manager Michael Jones attended one of SGAC's bi-monthly meetings and suggested the group have an AIDS walk which was something, he pointed out, that did not exist in Bloomington. \nJones said he wanted to get involved in the walk because AIDS prevention is an important topic for both himself and the company.\n"Starbucks stands on four pillars of community and volunteer involvement and one of them is AIDS foundations," Jones said. "It's something we are passionate about as a company, and I've always participated in AIDS walks. When I moved to Bloomington, I was taken aback when I looked at this wonderful community and couldn't believe there wasn't an AIDS walk."\nJones said he went to SGAC because of their global involvement. He attended the SGAC meeting to offer the idea of having an annual AIDS walk in Bloomington. He also said Starbucks donated funds in a grant form for SGAC for every hour that members volunteered. \n"That's what I love about Starbucks. It has such a heart that you just have to tap into it and find out how to give back to the community," Jones said. "We give to a lot of organizations. If you name it and it has a cause, then we can usually create some type of grant for it." \nAll of the proceeds made from the walk go to Bloomington Hospital's Positive Link Program, which provides assistance and support for patients with HIV/AIDS, said program manager Karen Danielson. \nDanielson said she is very grateful for a student group to put in the time and effort, not only into making the walk a great event, but bringing awareness to a real problem in the community.\n"We are delighted to be on the receiving end of SGAC's goodwill," she said. "This is extremely appreciated. Our work as a whole has a humbling nature about it, in that we see people with challenges and living with such hope and then to have a student group appreciate those challenges and go about addressing them and putting energy and time intensifies it. We are a very fortunate group to be working in the program that we are."\nPublicity chair for SGAC, freshman Anna Kostrzewsky, said unification among the group and hard work have made this a great experience.\n"It's been a unifying experience for the group, especially when we came back from Washington," Kostrzewsky said. "This was a good opportunity for us to come back to Bloomington and make a positive change in our own community."\nKostrzewsky said having a big name sponsor has made the event more credible and attracted more awareness to the issue.\nDanielson said overall turnout for the event will help to bring unity to a great cause in Bloomington.\n"This is one of these things where there's this great power in numbers and a great power in knowledge and appreciating the reality of HIV and AIDS," Danielson said. "When you gather a group of people together to do those things, of course we're very excited."\n-- Contact Senior Writer Lindsay Jancek at lmjancek@indiana.edu.