New spin on HIV prevention campaign

Yovannys Kenney, known as Gio to his friends, is an outreach worker at Boston Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS), and at 22 years old he isn't far removed from the population that the LGBT youth center serves. In fact, Kenney is a Boston GLASS alum, having gotten involved with the center as a high schooler. Boston GLASS helped open his eyes about the AIDS epidemic, and as an outreach worker Kenney spends his days educating other young people about HIV/AIDS. On March 7 Boston GLASS, working with its parent organization JRI Health and local filmmaker Kathryn Hall, will launch a new initiative, Project Deliver Us, that Kenney said would harness the creative power of youth across Boston to create innovative new messages to educate their peers about HIV and AIDS.

Pointing to some of the HIV prevention posters on the walls of the youth center, located in Back Bay, Kenney explained that few feature images of young people. Project Deliver Us aims to fill that gap by sponsoring a year-long contest called Articipation that invites young people to use their chosen method of expression - spoken word, paintings, hip-hop songs, dance, fiction, fashion design - to talk about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Kenney said there are no firm plans for what will happen to the winning entry, but JRI Health, Boston GLASS and Hall hope that the winning entry can be used as part of a public information campaign to raise awareness about AIDS among young people in Boston.

"They pretty much have got a whole year to come up with their artwork, and through that the winner will hopefully get their work publicized throughout Boston and all of Massachusetts through billboards, trains, posters," said Kenney. "We want people to know that this is the youth's perspective on what HIV and AIDS means to them."

JRI Health and Hall will launch the Deliver Us Project and the Articipation contest with a March 7 event at the City Year Lavine Civic Forum in the South End. The centerpiece of the launch will be a screening of Hall's new film, Deliver Us, a 30-minute documentary on the impact of HIV/AIDS in Boston's African American community. Hall, a 44-year-old Jamaica Plain resident, said the film is the latest step on a journey that led her from a 20-year career as a molecular biologist working in the biotech industry to a new vocation as a professional filmmaker. She said she first got into filmmaking creating short films for her daughter's birthday parties, but her first serious stab at film involved creating a short promotional film for the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, where she serves on the board of directors. The project inspired her to pursue a master's degree in filmmaking at Emerson, and she earned her degree last May.

Hall said she first began working on Deliver Us while studying at Emerson. Her friend, Nancy Norman, medical director for the Boston Public Health Commission, convinced Hall to accompany her to a forum on HIV/AIDS. Hall said the healthy-looking HIV-positive African Americans sitting on the stage clashed with the image of sickly people with Kaposi's sarcoma that she associated with AIDS. She was even more surprised to see acquaintances of hers on stage, people she did not know were positive.

"Some of the people sitting up on stage were people I knew. It was a shock. And I thought, why is nobody talking about this? This was incredible," said Hall.

Armed with her camera Hall took to the streets of Boston's black community, interviewing a range of community members about the epidemic, from Roxbury state Rep. Gloria Fox and former South End pastor Martin McLee to young people like Kenney and other youth. Her goal was to get a diverse range of perspectives about the epidemic, and she hopes that the young people watching the film at the launch event will be similarly inspired to flex their own creative muscles to impart their own perspectives on HIV/AIDS.

"I think my experience has been that people are moved to do things in different ways, and I think what Deliver Us does is the film seems to reach people where they're at, and it seems to give people an idea of something they want to do. ... What's cool about the film is if you take the metaphor of the film, it kind of made itself, and I think as long as you have some clear goals for the end product and an open mind and an open heart we're going to be able to be surprised and engaged by what comes out of it," said Hall.

Kenney said the launch event would also include presentations by some of the youth already involved in the project of their own art and creative works. He said one young artist who works in sculpture and other media will show his work, and other youth plan to present spoken word pieces and clothing that they have designed.

While Boston GLASS serves LGBT youth, Kenney said the launch event would feature a diverse crowd of young people from across the city. Kenney and Hall visited youth centers all over Boston to spread the word about the event, and Hall said at many youth centers the young people or staff would recommend other centers where they could find young people interested in the event.

"It's kind of our viral response to the virus," said Hall.

The launch event for the Deliver Us Project will take place March 7 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the City Year Lavine Civic Forum, 287 Columbus Avenue, Boston. The event is free and open to youth ages 12-29 and their family and friends. For more information visit www.projectdeliverus.com.