Let’s play and defeat HIV, AIDS

NGO fights the deadly disease by encouraging corporates to produce skits

Let's play and defeat HIV, AIDS

NGO fights the deadly disease by encouraging corporates to produce skits

This surely is an AIDS awareness campaign with a difference.

An NGOu00a0Population Services International (PSI)u00a0is taking the war against HIV/AIDS to people's workdesks, involving them in an innovative manner, which makes them messengers rather than recipients of the message.

The Bangalore-based NGO is encouraging corporates and individuals to script, enact and produce skits on the subject and upload them on a website that will remain active for 60 days. The entries will then be judged on theme, acting and production by a panel of eminent people from the field. The winning entry will be awarded.

Videos can be uploaded on the website, which was launched on Friday, free of cost at https://www.positivenegative.in/. However, till date no video has been uploaded on the website.

Atul Kapoor, the project director, said, "The need to educate the corporate audience and eradicate the stigma attached to the disease was the objective behind this initiative. The thought behind such a concept was to reach out to, and to encourage the web-savvy corporate audience to adopt this cause. The idea was also to leverage the ever-growing networking community to spread the message and receive support from them in spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS."

India has a large population and population density, low literacy level and consequently low levels of awareness, and HIV/AIDS is one of the most challenging public health problems faced by the country. The number of people living with AIDS in India is estimated to be between two and three million, the third largest in the world after South Africa and Nigeria.

In order to generate awareness about the programme, the HR and administration heads of 300 companies are being approached by PSI. The contest is also open to general public.

Hemant Roy, an IT executive working with an MNC in Noida, was unaware about such an initiative and expressed his willingness to participate in the contest. "Winning or losing this contest hardly matters. The objective here is social good. Even today, many educated people lack knowledge about AIDS. In a country like India the initiative will play a good role."

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