"Protect yoself!" HIV/AIDS Process Paper.

The group I worked with for the the duration of this project focused on the epidemic of HIV/AIDS throughout Philadelphia. Raeven, Taylor, Jailsa, and I brainstormed many ideas to help broadcast this problem to those in our school, and those throughout the city. We immediately began breaking down the project in to portions where think we would be most productive. Raeven created a google doc form where people could anonymously answer questions on HIV/AIDs related inquiries, Taylor created the script for our video and acted in it, Jalisa edited said video, and I was charged with social networking and creating an ad. 

Since we save desserts for last, I’ll list a couple challenges that arrived during the creation of this project. One challenge was designing an ad that would quickly grasp the eye of a passerby, while still delivering a powerful message. Many different advertisements line the walls of SLA, telling all who read of upcoming events. I had to make sure that our ad could compete amongst the sea of ads. I decided to incorporate the most famous African-American AIDS awareness activist Magic Johnson on a poster, along with some clover statistics. Instead of posting them around the school, we will be handing them out. This insures that people must at least look at them firsthand, before doing whatever they please with them. 

Another challenge was gaining followers on Twitter. We felt twitter would be the best social network to set up on because of it’s popular promotion reputation. YOu can get a word out quickly, and follow other pages that support the same cause as you. What started off as a fun idea, turned sour quickly. We couldn’t manage to get followers outside of our group mates! We knew our page wouldn’t progress within our own circle, so we looked to other groups who created twitters for their problem. Once we “followed” them, promotions and constant tweeting got me to a staggering 12 followers. Yes, this is a challenge that we are still trying to solve. 

On the other hand, a success we managed to pull off was a smooth video. Our video consisted of an angel and a devil, whom represented good judgement and bad judgement. Taylor approached us with a thorough script which clearly depicted each person’s role, and of course what they were saying. We were even able to use the nurse’s office to help Jalisa complete her role as a nurse preparing an AIDS test. I believe this video will grab the viewer’s attention of the presence of HIV/AIDS, and also the importance of getting tested/treated for it as quickly as possible. 

All in all, this project was fairly simple, as long as you’re organized. We broke down roles from the beginning, which gave all of us the chance to think about how we could construct our individual parts. With more time came more ways to perfect our product, and also add more components to help broadcast what we needed to say to the public. Our objective was to inform others of the dire epidemic of HIV/AIDS, which we think we accomplished.