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Under our “Quick Navigation” banner below, we have set up a new “World AIDS Day” section. We want to encourage you to participate in these activities that will be Webcast live around the globe on Friday, Dec. 1st and Saturday, Dec. 2nd:
1. Youth awareness events in 50 countries and across the U.S.
2. Major PeerCorps training sessions for you and your friends.
Join our effort and we will add your name and the photos of the events you are planning for all the world to see. Click here for Volunteer Form
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1. The U.S. Government’s CDC is now recommending that all teens, 13 and up, be tested regularly for HIV at your doctor’s office. Do you think this is a good idea?
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Search the teenaids.org website |
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Teens, help Dr. John's research by taking the Short Survey. By completing the Long Survey in full, you receive a small gift from Dr. John and TeenAIDS.
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| Author: |
host |
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11/29/2005 |
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| Dr. John urges youth to take responsibility by talking honestly to their peers. He challenges governments and adult society to educate their youth because: "It's the human right of every maturing adolescent to have complete access to the medical facts. |
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| South Korea and AIDS |
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By host on 5/20/2006 |
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| I have been in South Korea for a week as the guest of the Korea Federation of HIV/AIDS Prevention. This small but hospitable country is in the news but not about AIDS. According to the official figures only 4,000 cases of HIV/AIDS exist -- a very small number out of a population of 48 million (North Korea denies they have any problem at all but it is known that peasants forcibly returned from China and young military recruits who visit sex workers have some exposure to HIV). Yet what do these numbers signify? Some researchers and colleagues in Geneva and Cambridge argue that the low numbers are only the tip of the iceberg. The truth of the matter is that we can only see the obvious, not what is hidden... |
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| Blog #3 from Jordan and Cyprus |
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By host on 5/14/2006 |
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Reflections on Jordan and Cyprus.
This is going to be a short Blog on some of the highlights of my Jordan and Cyprus trips (I substituted Cyprus when my visa applications were turned down by Sudan and Libya despite the intervention of the Jordanian Royal Protocol Office. But first some of the young people who have helped TeenAIDS and me in our Peer outreach.
I previously mentioned a wonderful young woman, Reem from the University of Jordan. She has a real kind heart and loves to talk about AIDS to peers. Her friend and a fellow student named Ibrahim (aka 'brahim)...
Click here to view photos from the trip
Click here for Dr. John's article on Snowballing in Cyprus
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| Blog No. 2 From Jordan! |
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By host on 4/28/2006 |
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| Jordan has turned out to be an amazing adventure. I have met some of the kindest people anywhere who are very welcoming to strangers. The hotel that the Royal Office has given us is the luxurious five-star Grand Hyatt Hotel. For the last few days the King of Spain occupies the top floor while Bunny and I have rooms on the third floor. This was the hotel where the terrorist bombing took place last December. Nine members of the hotel staff were killed in the blast and when I talk to some of the staff now, they tear up because these were friends not just colleagues. Jordan is a very safe country by Middle East standards, but last week there were tanks circling the hotel because of a top-level meeting between the King of Spain and the King of Jordan. The newspaper has also talked about large arms caches that have recently been seized that were earmarked for bombing in Amman. Yet there is very little crime here like we have in the U.S. so in many ways we feel very safe here in Jordan. |
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| Dr. John In Jordan! |
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By host on 4/25/2006 |
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Bunny Bullock and I landed last night and hit the road running (Bunny serves as Board Secretary for TeenAIDS).We were met at the airport by representatives of the Royal Protocol Office who whisked us through immigration without visas. Because we were invited by King Abdullah our trip has been organised from beginning to end. The King had attended the same secondary school as I had in the United States, Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
We have been assigned a wonderful driver by the name of Majid who is with us from early morning to late at night . His English is limited but he is full of enthusiasm. He is officially our driver , Guide , and bodyguard ( I find this funny because... |
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| Dramatic Real Life Video |
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By host on 4/4/2006 |
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Today is Tuesday April 4th and I am sitting in the office finishing my lunch. In a few minutes I’m off to Fitchburg high’s PeerCorps group that meets after school. Last week a most dramatic moment occurred when one student told a story of her best friend and the news that she has HIV/AIDS. At first, many of the students in our group thought the young woman was talking about a role-playing scenario that we often practice in our meetings. When I realized that this wasn’t acting, but was real life, the group listened intently to the story of a young 19-year-old teen that found out 3 days earlier that she was pregnant AND tested positive for HIV.
It so happened that Eric Rubera, a Fitchburg State College video major, was there filming the stop action theater for training purposes. You can see the unedited moment of real life drama by clicking here. |
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| My Love/Hate Relationship with Technology |
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By host on 3/8/2006 |
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I did my Masters of Science (M.S. of V.S.) at MIT in Cambridge. That degree might make me appear like a brilliant scientist but nothing could be further from the truth. Truth be told, I need help inserting a plug in a socket (well, okay, my eyesight isn't as good as before and I hate to get down on my knees except in church). Let me tell you about three pet peeves of recent technology hassles.
Bank theft
click here for a newspaper article on the Bank Fraud
Yesterday, I got an urgent call (well, actually it was a message) from Sovereign Bank's ATM Fraud division. A young woman named Luc left a message in a calm but nevertheless urgent voice, that the TeenAIDS bank account had six recent, suspicious bank withdrawals. Stolen was almost $2,400 in three days from various ATMs in Ontario (shame on you scum, for ripping off a charity - and from Canada to boot, the birth place of my mother).
Luckily, Luc cancelled my card that was being misused. I had to go down to the local bank, sign an affidavit of unauthorized ATM card use and take it to the Police station. There has been a rash of VISA debit card withdrawals reported in the papers lately. I really didn't think TeenAIDS would be affected but I wasn't surprised either. Someone, somehow, has figured out a sneaky way to manufacture bogus ATM cards with the key information on the magnetic strip.
My biggest surprise was when I discovered that the card number they were using had been cancelled by me previously. Sovereign can't seem to explain why the money was illegally withdrawn using a cancelled card, except to say, "maybe the card wasn't cancelled" due to a technical problem. Oh, great!?! Supposedly, the money will be returned to our account soon. As a non-profit, we live "close to the margin." We raise and spend money on bills that need to be paid on time. I told the bank not to bounce any checks during this period. We'll see
Site crash
On Tuesday afternoon , February 28 (the day after my B-Day), we put 8,000 postcards in the mail announcing the launch of our newly revamped website. The mailing involved considerable expense. High schools and university libraries were the main recipients of the announcement along with a number of AIDS organizations. The color postcard is a stunner (click to see it) and has garnered a lot of favorable attention. The message side touted the high tech features of our website.
Two days later, the cards began arriving locally - by Friday, the bulk of the cards were being delivered nationwide. I had just returned from a meeting with Harvard film/video teaching assistant Pacho Velez who is working on creating two DVDs from my overseas footage of PeerCorps trainings (at the request of TeenAIDS Board member Robb Moss, his Harvard professor of film). Progress on the films was moving along. I was feeling great.
However, as soon as I got back to the office in the afternoon and opened my emails to read what I had missed in my absence, I got shocking news. The first one was from California I think. A man named Daniel said that he had received our postcard but when he went to visit us, there was NO website - evidently, it was lost in cyberspace! I panicked. Most of the staff had left for the weekend. Did I ever lose my cool! After raising the funds to post the cards about the expensively-revamped website, the bleeping site had gone AWOL. I placed frantic calls to our web team. They got on it immediately contacting the server who wasn't readily available (what can you expect for $10 a month?). In my exasperation, I grabbed my Yellow Lab and gave him a few vigorous hugs to calm myself down (isn't a loyal pet incredible?).
As it turned out, the server had shut us down suddenly because of technological problems, with only minutes of notice that no one in the office saw until Daniel sent his email. Everything was resolved three hours later but how many people looking for our site gave up when they couldn't find us, perhaps never to return again like the impulse buyers that we are? After years of rarely interrupted service, we went down on the most important day due to technology problems (are you getting an inkling of my frustration with technology?).
Domain name porno
By even reporting this, I'm probably setting in motion a few more hits for a despicable site and its purveyors of cheap smut. Although I shouldn't really blame this domain problem on technology, I will.
Our original website was posted in 1994, in the pioneer years of the internet. I remember being given html templates that I used to post much of its content based on my Harvard doctoral thesis. The original TeenAIDS-PeerCorps site used the URL suffix ".com" that was available then. However, by 1997 when TeenAIDS was officially organized as a non-profit charity, I gave up my original URL suffix for ".org" that was then being made available. Because I was paying all the start-up bills myself, I couldn't justify paying for extra domain names and URLs. I never imagined that there would be a downside to this decision that continues to hurt our efforts to help save teen lives from HIV/AIDS.
Imagine my surprise when I received an email from a young woman who was greatly disappointed and upset that my old URL, listed on the information cards that I pass out everywhere I go, brought her to a porno site! I checked and she was right. TeenAIDS' original domain name was re-sold to pornographers who liked the fact that it was getting traffic after its first three years and because it had the word "teen" in it. Upon investigation, I found out there was some connection to x-rated porn sites out of Lithuania and the Netherlands. I couldn't believe it.
I tried contacting the bums but they would do nothing to return the original domain name unless I paid a thousand dollars. Recently, I tried again to reason with hem, but it's just business to them. This is money that I didn't have then and still don't now, being a passionate volunteer in this battle against youth AIDS (who doesn't accept my annual salary when the limited monies raised from our wonderful donors go to our education programs).
Conclusion? Technology is both a blessing and a bummer. Modern advances allow this website to replicate my work a thousand-fold, every hour of every day in every corner of the world. Wow! When you think about it, technology is amazing. Thousands of young lives are getting life-saving information that they don't receive in school or from the media.
But what a headache it can be too.
Special Thanks
I want to thank and recognize the excellent web design team that has produced our revamped website. Kyle Laughlin of California originally designed our website in 2002 through an in-kind donation from his employer Sapient Corporation. In the summer of 2005, Kyle and I talked and agreed on a new version that would offer the latest technological advances to deliver our educational content globally. He is the chief person responsible for this site and works for a number of big time clients during the day.
My colleague since 1998, Steve Lim, has been a consultant with TeenAIDS since he was a freshman at MIT and set up the earlier version of the website as I began the Global series of Walks in 1999. He is a wizard with MACs (my weakness). He has also dedicated many hours to seeing this site get up and running. Together Kyle and Steve have made a major contribution to our outreach efforts. Kevin Pelletier is a Senior at Fitchburg State College and is our full-time intern working on the website. He has great experience in website design and keeps us on track from the Fitchburg office. He works closely with Kyle and Steve.
In future blogs, I will thank other staff. |
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| Banned in Utah and Communist China! |
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By host on 3/3/2006 |
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I thought this headline would catch your attention. When I first heard about this news it caught my attention too –and made me quite upset. Please read on…
It is sad when HIV/AIDS prevention education like the TeenAIDS model that is based entirely on medical facts, is outlawed in certain regions of the world. For whatever reason that governments or adult institutions make censorship of scientific data official policy, it is innocent young people who pay the price – in this case, by premature death from AIDS. Let me explain what has happened to my Harvard-based program in Utah and China.
In Utah, education is controlled by the State (here in Massachusetts, schools are locally controlled). I was invited to conduct my outreach in Utah by TeenAIDS Board member Doug Soelberg who had four children in the public school system. The Soelbergs are active members of the LDS (Mormon) Church. He and his wife Cher knew from conversations with their children’s friends that there was a lot of... |
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| My thanks to volunteer researchers |
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By host on 3/2/2006 |
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| I would like to tell young people that I always need help doing research on the internet. When I go to speak to young audiences, I ask for assistance. Three young people have recently donated their time and energy to provide this important assistance. Jonathan Woolf, a junior at Dartmouth College (my alma mater) in Hanover, New Hampshire has been... |
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| Emergency Blitz: They'll have blood on their hands |
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By host on 2/12/2006 |
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In the last two hours, I have been personally informed of severe cuts in teen HIV prevention programs in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all but eliminating their important work. We had a TeenAIDS-PeerCorps program for three years in sponsorship with the Erie County Board of Health. Today it is gone because of major cuts in state funding. Across Wisconsin, government cuts have crippled prevention programs geared to youth. Could this be the beginning of reports from around the country in the wake of new federal and state budget cuts on education? The timing couldn't be more curious following the State of the Union and Congress' recent budget votes. Are they really trying to cut waste and extend tax cuts or are other social considerations at play here? Perhaps some crafty politicians are finally realizing two of their goals for the price of one. It smells like biological censorship hiding in the sheepskin of tax cutting.
We tell the medical truth. Small-minded people who want to... |
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