Students Take Action During AIDS Week

A group of Westmont students brought attention to World AIDS Week by placing hundreds of small signs depicting children on Kerrwood Lawn, Monday and Tuesday Nov. 26-27. The placards represented the 600 children orphaned by AIDS every day.

The student group, Westmont’s Acting on AIDS, also screened the award-winning documentary “Angels in the Dust” about a wealthy family from Johannesburg, South Africa, who left everything to provide food, shelter, and education to over 550 South African children affected by HIV/AIDS in a newly established village.

Acting on AIDS is a program started by Christian college students to create awareness and promote activism on the global AIDS pandemic at colleges and universities across the nation.

Sophomore Christina Lundberg with Westmont’s Acting on AIDS says she became interested in the cause several years ago when she was in high school.

“I think it’s vital that we learn to care about other people, even those we might never come in contact with,” she says. “By decorating Kerrwood Lawn, we wanted to catch people’s eye, get them to think and maybe talk a little.”

Lundberg says the group is also collecting signatures to petition Congress to reauthorize the Global AIDS bill by the end of the year. Westmont’s Acting on AIDS is also planning a January fundraising dinner, Broken Bread Poverty Meal, to raise money for AIDS orphans.