CrowdOutAIDS is a collaborative online/offline project by and for young
people to develop UNAIDS' new strategy on youth and HIV!
Yet to openly
invite young people from across the world, reaching a broad group to
collaborate for new ideas, new energy and new partnerships was attractive,
given the size of the challenge.
While there
have been many successes in the AIDS response, 30 years into the epidemic
awareness about HIV is still very low in many places. Only 24%
of young women and 36% of young men in low-and middle-income countries have
adequate knowledge about HIV and how to prevent it. An estimated 5 million
young people are living with HIV today. Many lack access to lifesaving
treatment.
In response,
policies are made and programmes put in place “for” young people. But young
people don’t always have a say. CrowdOutAIDS.org, UNAIDS new crowdsourcing
project, turns that model on its head: it’s an online collaboration to rebuild
the organization’s approach to HIV and young people from the bottom up. Through
it, we want to find new ways to work with young people, across borders, for a
shift on AIDS.
To develop
UNAIDS’ new approach to youth and HIV, a transparent four
step process has been put together:
First, connect
the community of Advocates.
Step two is
about setting the agenda; engaging the community in dialogue and based
on the discussion, a survey will be developed to prioritize key issues.
Third, an application will be launched where young people can submit ideas and
actions to solve the challenges defined by the community in step two.
Finally, a
document summarizing the key outcomes of the CrowdOutAIDS process will be
drafted, in public.
.
CrowdOutAIDS
has one ultimate goal: that young people across the world ensure the ambitious
commitments made by UN Member States in the 2011 UN Political Declaration on
HIV/AIDS—such as halving new HIV infections and ensuring 15 million people have
access to treatment by 2015—are met.
