Speakers

Project Kindle has over 30 young people who are the peer educators of the SPEAK OUT program. Our speakers range in age from 7-17. They are all either infected with HIV or have a parent or sibling with the disease. They take their stories of living with HIV or AIDS, to students across the U.S. and Internationally. Each of the speakers have gone through 7-10 hours of training, each year, and many have spoken with our group since the inception of the program.

Here is an example of what you might hear at a SPEAK OUT presentation:

"Hey, how’s it going, my name is Reggie and I am from Chicago and I would like to explain how HIV has affected my life.  First, I like rap music.  Chinese is my favorite food. I play football, I am like any other kid, just like you are.  I think I am nice and kind.  I like to stay on track of my school work because school comes first.  When I am not in school I just chill and be on my space.  Now I would like to tell you about how HIV affected my life.

Did you know that 40,000 people get HIV every year?  Did you know that 1 out of every 4 people who have HIV do not know they have it because they have not had an HIV test?

HIV first came into my life when I was born.  A couple hours later my mom died.  HIV/AIDS has impacted my life cause if my real mom had takin her medicine I would not have HIV.

Since then my life has been different, sometimes it seems like it’s a disaster.  My dads wife raised me and I consider her as mom.  I was 6 years old when I learned that I had HIV. 

That made me feel like I was different from other kids.  When I was born I had to take shots because I was too little to swallow liquids.  I have been on medicine for 14 years.  Taking meds makes me feel like I can live for a long time. 

Now that I am older I feel like am just like any other kid.  I don’t tell my friends nothing about HIV because I feel like if we get mad at each other they will spread rumors.  One of my best friends knows and he’s cool with it. 

I learned that this disease does not stop me from doing what I need to do and how to do other things any other person can do.  It makes me angry that I have it, but sometimes I forget that I have it, from time to time.

Sometimes it scares me because I think sometimes that I could die and I don’t know when.  The disease might just shut down my body.  But I know that if I keep taking my medicine I will live.  I would love to become someone famous for a sport. 

I wrote a letter to HIV.  I want to read it for you:  Dear HIV,

HIV is not a bad thing when people do the right things by taking there medicine. And people with HIV will be ok.  I think that people on the street should learn about HIV before they talk about the people behind their backs.  I want people to know that HIV isn’t contagious by sweat, saliva, or hugs.  HIV makes me feel normal, because I know that I am not the only one who has it.

Camp Kindle lets me speak out about how I feel about HIV and camp helps other people speak out to me so we know we are not the only ones who have HIV. 

This is a picture that I drew at camp kindle last summer.

I called the picture dark hole because I think that’s what HIV is.

The different colors represent the different feelings I have about HIV.

Yellow means confused – orange means hope – red means sad – blue means normal – black means mad

Thank you for listening to my story.  One last thing I want you to know is that HIV is not spread by saliva, but can be spread by unprotected sex and blood."