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My name's Charlie Tway. Um, I'm down from Auckland, my first out on the park, and it's just been really good to see people celebrating their sort of every colour of the rainbow, all their expression and their solidarity with gays. Um, and it's just been a beautiful day. Great energy. It's a lot smaller than the big gay out, but that hasn't detracted from it at all. If anything, it's sort of been a close knit. It's a smaller community, and I find that whenever you have [00:00:30] a smaller gay community or a community of any sort, you sort of not only do you know everybody's business, but there is a lot more sort of involvement. I know that the New Zealand AIDS Foundation and the love your Condom volunteers they're like a close knit family, and you just don't really see that in big places like Auckland. It's sort of yeah, a little bit every man for himself. Yeah, And today you you're with the AIDS Foundation. I am indeed. Yeah. So they flew me down here to just help out and sort [00:01:00] of get a feel for what the community is like down in Wellington. Um, yeah, just get out there, get involved, um, sort of make connections with the gay community down here, And, um, so that I can sort of enjoy the variety. One of the issues I found, uh, last year when I was doing some work around, um, HIV aids way back when In the in the eighties. Um, we put on events, but a lot of, um there wasn't a lot of young people that were, uh, coming to those. How is [00:01:30] that in terms of, like, engaging young people in relation to HIV? Um, I think it's sort of it's difficult. I mean, you have to update your messaging to really target and make it fun and accessible to them. And I think that's what our YC does really well, they have a strong social media presence and just they play that game very well. It's very visual and especially targeted at them. Um, whereas I think in past the message was, you know, [00:02:00] it was about, um, people who died of AIDS. It was about fighting for sort of HIV reform. And, you know, that just didn't really resonate with the young ones. They just wanted a party or they wanted some colour and movement. And so it's finding a way to include that in the messaging and whilst creating a condom culture. So how was that achieved now? Yeah, So I think it's being on board with all the events. Um, you know, making [00:02:30] sure that you have volunteers out there as their peers going out and engaging with people. Um, it's, you know, making sure the the campaigns and stuff that you're doing are really targeted to that sort of age bracket. The the people that aren't testing and trying to sort of make them feel comfortable discussing sexuality And, um, comfortable talking about sexual health and going getting tested. So yeah, so so which, um, which kind of demographic age bracket are you? Are you targeting? Um, [00:03:00] I think that would be, um, late teens to, um, thirties. Sort of a vibe. Yeah, So I mean, it's just getting that sort of sexual health and education out there because it's not taught in schools. It's so you sort of. I know that from personal experience. It was sort of when we were doing sex set in schools. We were learning a lot about, like, reproductive stuff, but then you go out in the gay community. And it's like, [00:03:30] you know, there needs to be that extra sort of information about, like, why passing on HIV is, um you know, it it's a lot easier to do, um, through anal sex and, like, white guys are more at risk. So, yeah, it's sort of getting that sort of messaging out there and targeted messaging that you just don't get in high school or anywhere else. What? What do you think some of the issues are for rainbow communities in New Zealand in 2016? Um, [00:04:00] yeah. So I just moved back from Australia. So, you know, I have the perspective of you guys have done so Well, um, in terms of like what you've achieved here for gay rights, in fact, you've always done well and been ahead of the curve there. Um, I just think, though, that there is, you know, sort of really insidious people like the Destiny Church. And there's, you know, things [00:04:30] like C four thresholds and the government sort of, you know, pandering to us, but not really involving us in policy. And so, you know, I think that we just need to get stronger and have more of a presence there, like it feels at times like people's balls dropped off. Like there doesn't seem to be any fight there because there's always things to fix. And you were saying, um, the CD four threshold. What is that? Yeah. So currently in New Zealand [00:05:00] for HIV positive people, your CD four count, which is your immune system has to go below 500 before you can start meds. Or I believe it's actually 3. 50. Um, so that means that your immune system is already compromised before you're allowed to start treatment. And it goes against everything that the World Health Organisation and UN AIDS are saying, which is that, you know, start treatment immediately and the health benefits are [00:05:30] exponential. So, yeah, that's something that New Zealand needs to crack. Um, yeah, jumping ahead 30 years. Um, do you have a picture of what an ideal New Zealand would be like? Yeah. Um, I would like to see there be a lot more unity in the community. Um, I find that everybody's sort of in their clicks, and, um, you know, it's they look [00:06:00] out for themselves, um, and I also think that there is a lot of judgement out out there. I, especially an example, would be with HIV, and I think that as things like prep come to fruition and get included in the lexicon of sort of, you know, safe sex that, um, you know, it takes things like HIV stigma out of the way. It takes, um, being ashamed to have a discussion about safe sex out of the picture, and it makes everything sort of [00:06:30] more accessible and sort of strips the fear out of it. So, yeah, so so is there's still quite a lot of sticking around there. Um, yeah. No, I I'm sort of lucky. I live 100% open like I than in media and on TV and stuff. So it sort of weeds out the ignorant people. But I know that people that aren't as confident there is they're met with a lot of sort of resistance [00:07:00] to even dating somebody with HIV or even having say sex with somebody with HIV because they're not informed. Um, at the end of the day, it all comes down to like them not having the information at their disposal about what actually constitutes and doesn't constitute risk. And, um, you know, we're not the Boogey Man. We're not out there to pass on the virus to people. In fact, you'll find that the majority of new [00:07:30] transmissions of HIV aren't actually coming from people that know that they're HIV positive. They're they're coming from people that aren't testing or or don't know their results or, you know, and part of that is also ties into HIV stigma. So, like if you're afraid of going and getting tested because IV is this big sort of axe hanging over your head, which it isn't, it's perfectly manageable. Then you're not going to go get tested because you want to know those results. [00:08:00] And those are the people that are passing on HIV.
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