Happy New Year! Members of SCORA-Japan hope all SCORA members around the world have a great year in 2013! In 2012, we had a satisfying year, and we feel more motivated than ever for SCORA. As the New Year starts, we would like to share last year’s WAD activities and our New Year’s resolutions. Best wishes for an excellent and prosperous year!
Tokyo
Hello! We are SCORA-Tokyo. For WAD 2012, we joined the World Aids Day Party at Omotesando, a famous main street in Tokyo. Participants met over drinks, and a presentation about HIV/AIDS was performed. It was a very good opportunity for those who lacked proper understanding of HIV/AIDS to learn more. We would like to hold more events like this, sharing useful information with as many people as possible. Also, someday we want to hold a parade on the streets of Tokyo, and hope to arrange a series of workshops for the public presented by SCORA-Tokyo for World AIDS Day.
Hamamatsu and Nagoya
The members of SCORA-Hamamatsu and SCORA-Nagoya participated in a parade for World AIDS Day in Nagoya. In advance, the members studied about HIV/AIDS and we became more conscious that we should all develop our understanding of HIV and AIDS, and that the issues matter to all of us, not just to people we don’t know. During our parade, sometimes we felt people were looking at us with suspicion. In Japan, sadly some people still have strongly discriminatory views about the HIV/AIDS issue, however, we hope that our parade helped some people to reconsider their feelings. During the event, we renewed our determination to convey accurate information about HIV/AIDS to university and high school students through the Peer Education Project.
Hokkaido
SCORA-Hokkaido arranged a WAD event in Sapporo, the biggest city in Hokkaido. The event held by the WAD Sapporo Executive Committee had two programs. Firstly, for “Red Ribbon Live 2012 in Sapporo,” famous musicians got together and performed their music, and shared info about HIV/AIDS with the audience. Secondly, for “Around You ~VOICE~,” stories and contributions about HIV/AIDS received from a large number of people were recited with acoustic music. We also wrote a story from the point of view of a medical student.
Even if we are tempted to think that HIV/AIDS is not relevant to us, we should remember that we share our society with a large number of HIV infected people. Through our SCORA activities, we sincerely hope that people around Japan realize that HIV/AIDS is an important issue that affects us all.
Thank you!
Haruno Ueda (NORA), Tsukasa Watanabe, Maya Yamada, Yu Suzuki, Akane Nogimura, Haruka Yamasita
