World AIDS Day - SMART Youth

In honor of World AIDS Day, SMART Youth participated in several really great events throughout the first week of December to raise awareness and spread the word about prevention and condom usage! We kicked off the week with Cafecito at the East Harlem Café.  Sam Kirk, a multidiscipline artist, displayed her artwork and gave a talk about pieces she created especially for SMART. On Tuesday, we worked with Sam to create a wonderful community art project started by SMART Youth and SMART women and completed by the community on Thursday at Viva El Barrio! The finished artwork looked amazing and was a powerful piece conveying what community means to each of the individual artists. It truly was a collaborative effort!

SMART Youth was all over the City collaborating with NYIT (New York Institute of Technology) and NYU (New York University) facilitating sexual health workshops and sitting on panels. Everyone was fascinated by the female condom demonstration and got some specialty condoms!

On Thursday Viva El Barrio!, an annual community event in honor of World AIDS Week, took place, and SMART Youth was there to spread the message about sexual health and prevention. We tabled at the event, and community members were able to come by to “shop” for specialty condoms, learn about many of SMART’s programs, and see a female condom demonstration in action. We were able to give away a ton of condoms, and community members benefited from relevant sexual health information, along with great food and salsa dancing!

As an awesome end to this busy week, SMART Youth hosted an Open Mic Night “The Youth Speak the Truth!” to give youth the opportunity to express what it means to them to be a youth living in a world with HIV. Several youth performed some really powerful poetry, hip-hop, and even visual art to make the night both successful and inspiring. In addition, we had awesome food, activities, and conversation, making the night a great ending to a really busy and phenomenal World AIDS Week!