Katrina Sargent

This week there have been a few more people wearing red around campus, be it a T-shirt, ribbon or beaded bracelet. The cause for the burst of color is World AIDS Day, which was on Dec. 1.

The UPC is sponsoring a promotion table to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. It will be open from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Union Monday through Friday.

The table features a number of videos about AIDS, supplies for making bracelets with red beads, ribbons, a fact sheet and registration for a drawing. The UPC is giving away a (RED) I-Pod and a $25 Gap (RED) gift card. Anybody wearing anything red is eligible to register for the drawing, which will be held on Friday sometime after 1 p.m., said Hanna Lindberg. Lindberg is the Community Service Coordinator for UPC.

Lindberg said she chose to have an AIDS awareness week because it is something that nobody really talks about, and it is not always seen as an issue here. She said it is good to help people be aware of it.

Bethany Wuttke, a junior human development and family science major who is helping run the promotion table, said it would be “good to help people on the SDSU campus be aware of how many people are affected by AIDS.”

Wuttke said her strategy was to pull people aside in the Union and have them check out the table and sign up for the drawing if they were wearing red.

The reason UPC chose to give away the Ipod and Gap gift card is their affiliation with (RED). Bono, the singer from U2, and Bobby Shriver created (RED) to use business and consumer power to fight AIDS in Africa. The RED-branded products donate up to 50 percent of their profits to the Global Fund, which is dedicated to fighting AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The Global Fund uses the money from (RED) to help fight AIDS in Africa, specifically focusing on women and children.

(RED) launched at the beginning of March in 2006. So far, (RED) has given more than $45 million to the fund, more than $30 million of which has been used in Swaziland, Rwanda and Ghana, according to a fact sheet from joinred.com.

Some of the companies involved in the project are Motorola, American Express, Gap, Emporio Armani, Converse, Apple and Hallmark.

The program, sponsored by the money earned through (RED), includes paying for pills for HIV positive people in Africa to help them stay alive. According to (RED), there are about 13 million orphans in Africa due to AIDS.

There are 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the world. More than half of these people live in Africa. AIDS is the leading cause of death in Africa, more than 5,800 people die each day.

There were 433,760 people in the United States living with AIDS, and currently there are 325 people in South Dakota infected with HIV/AIDS.

For more information about HIV/AIDS and AIDS awareness, visit the UPC’s promotion table in the Union this week, or check out (RED) at joinred.com.

#1.883028:866589865.jpg:aidsbooth_jn.web.jpg:Brady Mallory pins a red ribbon on Cori Bortnem in the Main Street of the Union on Tuesday. The red ribbons help raise awareness for AIDS.: