CHLP’s Youth Advocacy Corps and SMART Youth to Hold Training Session for Manhattan Neighborhood Network’s Summer Youth Education Program (2014)
The Center for HIV Law and Policy (CHLP)’s Youth Advocacy Corps and long-time partner organization SMART Youth will hold a training session on HIV criminalization for young people involved in Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN)’s Summer Youth Education Program. MNN’S program offers free video production training and education to young people of color or low-income backgrounds, providing an alternative to mass media and helping students think proactively and constructively about issues affecting their lives. Programs encourage young people to express creativity, foster dialogue, and participate in social action.
CHLP and SMART Youth will present on the use of laws and policies in New York and across the United States that target people living with HIV on the basis of their status. We will discuss the impact of HIV criminalization on various communities, and how HIV-related stigma complicates disclosure of one’s HIV status, especially for young people. We will brainstorm ways that the Summer Youth Education Program participants can become involved in advocacy to end HIV criminalization, as well as in CHLP’s Youth Advocacy Corps, which focuses on sexual health advocacy on behalf of young people in state custody. Summer Youth Education Program participants would join the young men and women at BOOM!Health in the South Bronx who are currently receiving advocacy skills training to prepare them to meet with state officials from the NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to discuss the need for comprehensive, LGBTQ-inclusive sexual health services and sexual health literacy programming for youth in foster care.
The training session is Monday, July 7, 2014, 3 – 4:30pm, at El Barrio Firehouse Community Center at 175 E. 104th St. in East Harlem. For more information, contact Adrian Guzman at [email protected] or 212-430-6733.
