To acknowledge World Aids Day, a collage has gone up inside Bike Windsor Essex.
“So much stigma, that needs to stop,” says Joanne Schingh, who is living with HIV. “It needs to stop now.”
The collage features the faces of 710 people, directly or indirectly affected by HIV. The 710 represents the number of people living with HIV in the community.
“It’s 2016, not 1980. People are living healthy, full lives with HIV, and this demonstrates they look like everyone else, and you never know who’s living with it.” says Kim Levergood, Outreach Coordinator with the Aids Committee of Windsor.
Among the photos, Joanne Schingh, who was diagnosed in 1997.
“I was scared, alone, terrified. I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she says.
She was infected with HIV after having unprotected sex with a man who didn’t know he was HIV positive.
Schingh says “we are just living with a virus. We bleed like you. The only thing different is I have a virus and you don’t.”
She hopes her story will inspire a different way of thinking about HIV.
“To be honest, I didn’t think I’d live that long, this long. To be here standing is quite remarkable.”
Stigmas still exist, leaving many HIV positive individuals living in fear, which is why the Aids Committee of Windsor believes campaigns like this are so important.
