Giving back to our community is such a beautiful gesture! After lending her services to HIV infected women in Africa and India, Alicia Keys continues her mission in the states and wants to bring awareness to the community about HIV and AIDS.
Earlier this week, the Grammy Award winner spoke with HIV positive women at the United Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She touched on a number of issues regarding the disease such as fear and negative connotation society puts on those infected.
To help spread awareness and educated others on HIV, the R&B songstresses partnered with the Kaiser Family Foundation for its “Empowered,” campaign last month. The foundation’s mission is geared to educating women on getting tested, preventing the spread of the disease, and treatment while also providing grants to community-based projects.
One of Keys’ primary demographics for this campaign is African-American women, who represent two-thirds of new HIV infections among females in the United States.
“Black women are disproportionately affected, making up for the majority of all new infections,” Keys said. “That’s a must-have conversation.”
To identify those communities affected by the disease, Alicia along with Empowered Community Grants program with Kaiser and Aids United will give community-level projects up to $25,000 in grants to provide knowledge to women and HIV.
In the next five years, the campaign hopes their efforts will decrease the number of misconceptions and increase the number of individuals educated on the virus.
To learn more about the campaign and what you can do in your community, visit the campaign’s website http://greaterthan.org.
( Source: Washington Post )
