Public art cannot only beautify, but enlighten. That’s why the AIDS Foundation of Chicago teamed with artists, business owners and community organizations to create an AIDS awareness mural in Austin, a West Side neighborhood disproportionately impacted by HIV. 

Ahhh, spring! Birds are chirping, bunnies are hopping, flowers are blooming, and kids are proming. We Condom Cupids need to gear up and help the young’n’s spread the love safely this year.

Washington Needs to Hear from You!

For the past 12 years, shortly after Mother's Day, scientists and AIDS activists have commemorated HIV Vaccine Awareness Day. It is likely perceived as an obscure observance by most Americans, but one that deserves our attention given this sobering reality: Twenty-eight years after the discovery of HIV, we still have no effective vaccine.

Editor's Note - There are a lot of HIV/AIDS related web resources out there.  Starting with this post, Dose of Change will periodically feature websites we think every advocate should have in their bookmarks.  Please send along any and all suggestions.  We'll tag each of these posts with the incredibly clever 'AIDS advocacy bookmarks' so you can find them easily.

In the realm of HIV prevention, there's a lot of lingo.  Now try remembering all those terms in Spanish as well as English.  No es facil, cierto?

Enter the HIV/AIDS Prevention Bilingual Glossary!

This great resource was collaboratively developed by a number of governmental and academic institutions and is hosted by the Office of Minority Health, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services.  Users can search in Spanish or English for HIV prevention terms in either language.  They even have a cool tag cloud that shows the most commonly searched terms!

Go check it out!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010: "Infórmate: Breaking the Silence - HIV Update on the Latino Community"

Conference Description
The conference is a one day event that will explore how HIV/AIDS is affecting the Latino community. Prevention education, healthcare access, information and advocacy are the most important tools the Latino community has to fight HIV/AIDS.

Target Audience
Persons with experience in prevention education, treatment and adherence education such as health care providers, prevention and community health workers, nurses, health educators, program directors, social workers, case managers, and many others.

REGISTER NOW! *space is limited*

Download PDF flyer here and in Spanish here.

By Joyce C. Tang via The Daily Beast

The first version of the female condom made a weird noise, fell out, and was expensive, too. Now public health experts are pushing a new and improved version in American cities. Can it overcome stigma?

Until recently, Leslie Evans, a case manager at Vital Bridges, a nonprofit HIV/AIDS outreach program in Chicago, had never heard of the female condom. "I couldn't even picture one until I saw it," she says. Evans wondered how the female condom worked, who would want to use one, and whether the rings on each end would be uncomfortable. Though her job was to encourage safe sex to her clients, "I never really promoted it," Evans says of the female condom. "Just condoms, condoms, condoms"—and by condoms she means the male version.

Love it or hate it, we can't escape it:  electronic advocacy is here to stay. 

Over the past decade, email and web-based advocacy tools have become the most conspicuous part of seemingly every advocate's grassroots organizing toolbox.  Whether you use software to manage a small network or you are a guru of list segmentation and A/B subject line split testing (whatever that is) - you're likely using some electronic platform to stay in touch with people tied to your issue.

With so many people clicking to 'take action,' demand for e-advocacy capability has provided fertile ground for the sprouting of a wide range of services catering to the needs of the netroots.  In the hopes of helping you, good advocate, sort through this dense jungle, Dose of Change has compiled a list comparing some of the many options out there - from freebie blogging to the fully tricked out legislative specialists.

NOTE: Text of this PDF is small so don't forget to ZOOM IN for easier reading.

Action needed today: Download and share this state budget petition!

At a meeting of HIV advocates and services providers on April 6, Illinois AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) director Jeff Maras predicted a grim future for people with HIV in Illinois without adequate state funding.

So you know you need a group of people in your community, city or state to mobilize in response to certain issue...but how do you get started identifying and developing that network?  To whom do you reach out?  What do you have them do?

There are a lot of questions to consider when putting together an outreach plan aimed at building a grassroots network from scratch.  The guide attached to this post helps to outline some of the basics you'll need to consider: tools, stakeholders, messages, activities.  The information is split up so, whether your network has a full time organizer or is volunteer led, you'll be able to find out what works best for you!

As always, please tell us what you think!