HIV/AIDS: UN tasks young people on strategy through social media

HIV/AIDS: UN tasks young people on strategy through social media

The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has urged young people to create and shape the new UN strategy on youth and HIV/AIDS through an online collaborative project, which was launched on Tuesday.

The project, tagged: ‘CrowdOutAIDS.org’, is expected to use several social media platforms to facilitate the development of new policies to combat the pandemic.

Actors and creator of change

The Executive Director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, who spoke at the launching in New York, said: “The initiative’s name alludes to the popular concept of crowd sourcing, which consists of letting large undefined groups of people collaborate and come up with innovative solutions for tasks traditionally performed by individuals.”

“We are asking youths around the world to debate, draft and work with UNAIDS to implement this new strategy. It is absolutely critical that we engage young people, not as recipients of our message but as the actors and creators of change”, he noted.

It was gathered that the UNAIDS' initiative would run for a period of two months, in which anyone aged 15 to 29 would be able to submit and share their ideas and proposals for the strategy.

Spreading the word

Sidibe also disclosed that CrowdOutAIDS.org would use a four-step model of collaboration, which is aimed at allowing participants use a range of social media platforms to connect, share and collaborate on a new strategy that speak and addresses the key issues they face when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

The participants would be able to use their personal social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and personal blogs, to spread the word about the project and then discuss their ideas through online forums and other collaborative platforms, such as Google Docs.

They will also be able to shape the new strategy and see it transform from an initial draft to completion through a wiki-platform, which allows users to add and edit content in a collaborative way.

PANA/Shakira/Williams