Project Kindle has an extensive community HIV/AIDS education and outreach program. Through the peer-to-peer speakers bureau, SPEAK OUT, Project Kindle has educated thousands of students and adults across the nation and is building resources to continue to combat social stigma and improve the quality of life for all people living with HIV/AIDS through additional presentations.

SPEAK OUT stands for “Sharing Personal Experiences And Knowledge: Our Unique Truths”. The SPEAK OUT program uses a wide variety of young speakers that are either infected with HIV or affected by HIV to educate their peers. The speakers are between the ages of 7 – 17 years old. They share their personal stories about how HIV has changed their life and other important information pertaining to HIV/AIDS. For many, this will be the first time ever meeting someone who is knowingly HIV-positive. The speakers are matched to the demographics of the students at each school so the audience is best able to relate to the speakers. The many similarities between the speakers and audience allow for a once-in-a-lifetime educational experience for thousands of students.

The first goal is to improve the health and quality of life of the participants by increasing their confidence, self-efficacy, and social support network.

The second goal is to improve the health of the audiences by increasing their knowledge about the severity of the disease, perception of personal risk, and intentions to implement self-protective behaviors to prevent HIV transmission.

For more information contact us!

v

The I Know Initiative is an HIV awareness and education program focusing its outreach at young people through social media. The materials focus on the personal stories, photos, videos, messages and artwork from project KINDLE participants; children, adolescents, and families that are infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS.=

The I Know Book is a full-color, 64 page book filled with the personal stories and artwork of Camp Kindle participants. This book (and accompanying video) was originally created for educators to share with their students as a supplemental resource in the classroom. By the end 2008, this book and video reached over 1,000 teachers in Illinois, California, Colorado and Nebraska. Today this book and DVD continues to be a resource to many educators as well as AIDS service organizations, hospitals and families looking for a way to introduce and discuss how HIV impactes youth.

The I Know book focuses in-depth on five youth from Camp Kindle. In addition, 5 topics dealing with HIV/AIDS are explored. These topics are ones that most often came up in writings and artwork of Camp Kindle campers. The topics are: Being a Kid, Relationships, Medication, Stigma, and Education.

I Know: Brryan Jackson is a 14 minute video (included in the back of the I Know Book) that introduces viewers to Brryan Jackson, a very special 17-year-old Camp Kindle participant. Brryan was purposely injected with the HIV virus by his own father when he was just an infant. At five years old he was diagnosed with full blown AIDS and given five months to live. Now, 13 years later, Brryan is an outspoken advocate and dedicates a lot of his time and effort to raise awareness and eradicate stigma.

The video can be viewed on our vimeo page through the vimeo link.