Leading HIV Advocacy Group offering Free HIV Test
afe Spaces is a project of LoveYourself with partner establishments to provide free condoms to anyone who needs them. Launched in 2017, the app-based condom distribution program started with only 20 locations. In less than a year, 30 new establishments have joined the project in efforts to make safer sex more accessible.
Every newly diagnosed Person Living with HIV (PLHIV) has to absorb a wealth of information about their journey towards and in treatment. Among the multitude of terms to remember, most commonly used are “CD4 Count” and “Viral Load” but what do these terms really mean and how important are they to every PLHIV who are on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART)?
If you search for “transition” on Google, it actually gives a specific definition for gender transition: to “adopt permanently the outward or physical characteristics of the gender one identifies with, as opposed to those associated with one’s birth sex.” It’s an incomplete definition, of course: it’s not just outward characteristics that change. Neither are they always the most important changes which that assume such changes happen at all: being transgender doesn’t always mean having extreme discomfort with the body you’re born with, as we’ll talk about later. But transitioning, in whatever form it takes, does mean a change that radically alters an individual. Many transgender people, very appropriately, refer to this as a “journey”.
HIV advocate and educator Ronivin “Vinn” Pagtakhan, and political analyst and academician Richard Javad Heydarian are joining eight other young active global citizens as honorees of the 2018 JCI TOYP. Other honorees came from Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Romania, Syria, Turkey and United Kingdom.
Safe Spaces PH is a growing initiative of LoveYourself Inc. together with partnering establishments and organizations all around the metro. The project aims to provide a series of sex positive places where you can get free condoms and lubes without the worry of being judged.
Through a project called “Switch,” we are opening our doors to PLHIVs who wish to undertake their treatment at a safe and affirming private facility of LoveYourself. Treatment services at LoveYourself, like in government-run treatment hubs, are offered free of charge.
Hundreds of LoveYourself volunteers reunited this August 11, 2018 at Hotel H2O to celebrate seven years of continual victories in the HIV advocacy. Since LoveYourself’s establishment in 2011, the organization has many successes to be proud of. Volunteers took time to reflect upon their collective efforts to reach the goals they set out for themselves.
When Catriona Gray landed in the top 5 and bagged the Beauty with a Purpose award in Miss World 2016, she was recognized for her passionate work in Paraiso Bright Beginnings Project. Since then she has gone on to not only win the Miss Universe-Philippines crown to represent the country later in December, but has also added the HIV advocacy as one of her top passion projects.
Sex can still be satisfying with a condom on. It’s just a matter of finding the right one that works for you and your partner. It’s 2018 and technology is continuously improving the products we use, and that includes condoms. Okamoto, a Japanese company and global brand, have dedicated themselves to innovating condoms, prioritizing thinness and softness as much as they do safety.
SOGIE and LGBT are language tools that may still continue to evolve, used to better capture the experience of human diversity. Due to its complexity, confusion in understanding sexuality is inevitable.