Looking for a blog entry is not always so easy, also because, I don't know why, the most interesting things I find are usually about LGBT issues. I would like to change subjects sometimes, but in the last days I found it difficult. Maybe it's because my Google knows me very well and now it's set to look automatically for pages about gay matters (and this is scary). Or maybe it is just because of me. Maybe the two things are both true. All the same, it is not very important, since for gay people, the actual reality of facts is scarier today than a few years ago, even if the awareness on HIV/AIDS matters is way better than 20 years ago.

It is sad to notice how the knowledge about safe sex often remains just a theoretical concept, far from being a day to day practice for everyone. I recently talked about the statistics of the gay community in Israel, but that was just one example. Surfing on the internet you can find similar information about Russia, Brazil, China and Indonesia. By the way, I am not depressed, I also found many positive examples, like the Philippine organization Love Yourself. This is the fastest growing HIV advocacy group of that country and I am not surprised that it is a youth and LGBT organization. This February, Love Yourself launched Project Indulge, a campaign born thanks to the collaboration with the multi-awarded advertising agency Campaigns and Grey and top-ranked photographer Jeanne Young. Ompong Remigio, Chief Creative Officer of Campaigns and Grey, explained that the agency wanted to contribute to HIV awareness and to encourage HIV testing... Love Yourself has a good understanding of their target audience and how HIV had become a national epidemic. The opinion of Chris Lagman, Director for Counseling and Education for Love Yourself, is that "Fear is what actually prevents sexually active individuals to go for HIV testing. The aim of this campaign is to create a more positive impression about HIV testing and address the stigma behind it. This has been our approach to awareness, education and counseling. And it has been working for us based on the results we are getting". Love Yourself -like DAA always does too- engaged in the fight against HIV through a form of communication that steps away from the usual fear tactics and instead prefers to feature provocative yet tasteful imagery and in my opinion Project ‘Indulge' is the right example to look at if we want to continue with this strategy.