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Media Centre > News Releases > EPF on World Aids Day
Ensuring Positive Futures reaches out across the nation for World Aids Day
4th December 2006
Teams from Ensuring Positive Futures have travelled the country to raise awareness of HIV for World Aids Day.
Glenda Jackson MP with Drew Collins, EPF Employment Diversity Officer, at an EPF World Aids Day event in London.
World Aids Day reached its eighteenth birthday this year. In the late ‘80s when it began there were just 142,000 reported cases of HIV worldwide. Today there are over 40 million. 18 years on there is still much ignorance and misunderstanding surrounding HIV and Aids.
People living with HIV do not just have to manage a serious medical condition; all too often people face stigma and prejudice because of their HIV status. This can lead to people losing their jobs, and missing out on a successful career.
Ensuring Positive Futures strives to challenge this prejudice in the UK, and to enable people living with HIV to succeed in the workplace.
This World Aids Day EPF was engaged in a wide range of awareness raising activities including:
- London conference on HIV in the workplace, in partnership with Unison
- Conference in Leeds with the Public and Commercial Services Union
- HIV awareness seminar with Isle of Wight public services, including local government, police and prison services
- HIV education stand at Nationwide Building Society centres in Swindon and Northampton
- Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead - stand to promote AIDS awareness
- University talks at Roehampton University and Southwark College
- Save the Children – lunchtime staff seminar
- Royal College of Midwives - course in Sheffield for regional and national representatives
- Wokingham District Council - poster and e-mail campaign
- British Transport Police - e-mail and poster campaign
- Ensuring Positive Futures programme director Andrew Little was at London’s Choice FM taking part in the Dave VJ show
- Interviews with local and national press and radio
Drew Collins, EPF’s Employment Diversity Officer, who co-ordinated the World Aids Day events, commented:
“Its still the case that alot of people regard HIV as a condition that only affects certain minority groups. World Aids Day acts as a reminder that HIV can affect anyone. We had a great response at all our events, and its great that we were able to put HIV on the agenda as a workplace issue. For World Aids Day we had a very strong message, that HIV is everyone’s business.”
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Notes
- Ensuring Positive Futures (EPF) is part of a community programme called Equal, a European Social Fund initiative, which tests and promotes new means of combating all forms of discrimination and inequality in the labour market. The GB Equal Support Unit is managed by ECOTEC.
- World Aids Day is held on the 1st December every year. Until 2005 it was organised by UNAIDS; it is now co-ordinated by the World Aids Campaign.
Contact
Christina Earl, Head of Employment and Trade Union Projects, UK Coalition of People Living with HIV and AIDS:
Email: cearl@ukcoalition.org
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7564 2180
This site is operated by the UK Coalition of People Living with HIV and AIDS, 250 Kennington Lane, London SE115RD. Registered Charity number 1081309, Limited company, Registered Company in England and Wales number 2857569. Reproduction of material on this site is encouraged for non-for-profit or educational purposes on condition that permission is sought first. Ensuring Positive Futures is part of a community programme called Equal, a European Social Fund initiative, which tests and promotes new means of combating all forms of discrimination and inequality in the labour market. The GB Equal Support Unit is managed by ECOTEC.