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Hello this is Miguel Gomez with AIDS.gov.
I’m here in Washington, DC
with a colleague from California.
Could you introduce yourself please?
My name is Lance Toma and I’m the
Executive Director of Asian &
Pacific Islander Wellness Center.
The A&PI Wellness Center is a 23 year old
organization. We're located in San Francisco
we were started to address the epidemic
of ***/AIDS in Asian and Pacific Islander
communities. So we offer *** services
from prevention, care, treatment, testing.
We also do a variety of substance abuse
mental health and Hepatitis testing,
education and out reach. In addition to that
we also do a lot of capacity building so
we provide support throughout the bay area,
throughout the state of California and nationally
in order to address the epidemic of ***/AIDS
in our communities.
We conceptualized it 6 years ago and
began this project called the Banyan Tree
Project. It's a campaign that's year long
that culminates every year on May 19
with the National A&PI ***/AIDS
Awareness Day. And we really envisioned it
so that we could create awareness, visibility
and break the silence around ***/AIDS in our
families and communities.
And this year what our campaign is really about,
it’s about talking about saving face
that’s such a part of our culture.
And that saving face actually doesn’t
make us safe right now.
We have to talk about *** and I’m asking
everyone to talk about *** with your loved ones,
with your families, with everyone.
In our communities we don't talk about ***,
we don't talk about sex.
And it is going to harm us
and it's harming us already.
But we don't have a dialogue around it
in our communities in our families.
And so we conceptualized this then
to really start the dialogue so that we can
normalize *** as an issue, we can take away
the stigma that surrounds it in our communities,
in our families, in our homes.
So that we really can address this epidemic
and turn it around.
Please go to BanyanTreeProject.org
or APIWellness.org and you can get materials
and information about May 19
and anything and everything to support you
to create an event in your community.
Well, thank you.
This is Miguel Gomez with AIDS.gov.