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AIDS.gov recently attended the National African American MSM Leadership
Conference on ***/AIDS and other Health Disparities.
Doug Anthony, Events Specialist Consultant, NAESM.
The reason why the conference is so important to our demographics
community is because it’s the only national Black conference catering to
black gay men. It’s an avenue where they reaffirm themselves, the convene, they
dialogue, and they learn from each other. And this helps all the participants when
they go back to their communities to help and reach out to Black gay men as well as
black gay youth.
Donato Clarke, Planning Committee Member
I think this is an important platform as well for us to talk about some serious
health concerns that have been happening in the African American msm
Black gay community. You know, there’s not really a platform to do that. So in this
arena, you know we have to have a platform where we can partake in such a
conversation. That conversation has to continue, especially in light of recent data
that shows that *** infection has really hit hard in the Black gay community. So
without this conference, there really wouldn’t be a good platform for us to
share information and engage with one another.
The NAESM Conference has a youth leadership program Creating Responsible
and Intelligent Black Brothers to build a pipeline of leaders.
We have developed a program, a one year program, called Creating Responsible
Intelligent Black Men and it’s called the CRIB program. Young men are selected
between the ages of 18 to 25 to go through a year long synopsis...
I think that is important. We have to show them the way to leadership and guide
them and also you know helping them become part of the fight as opposed to
being involved and effected by it and just not and just sitting idle and waiting for
some help to arrive. You know they have to triumph and figure out a way to protect
themselves and not just themselves but others as well. So we have to be able to
help them on their path to success in this field and that’s what we do here.
They have role models to look forward to that are at the conference that can mentor
them. So this program is really essential in developing young black gay leaders.