A DECADE OF EDUCATING OUR YOUTH IN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES ON HIV/AIDS & STDs
ABOUT R.A.P ON AIDS
Founded in 2008, the R.A.P on AIDS Campaign is an award-winning social marketing campaign that aims to reduce knowledge-behavior gaps concerning the risks of HIV/AIDS/STDs. We will use the campaign to help educate the urban community about AIDS awareness. This campaign will teach the importance of AIDS by continuously having open discussions on the topic including abstaining from sex and offering safe sex alternatives by providing free HIV/AIDS testing and condoms at each event.
Our social marketing approaches are geographically accessible, complement standard health education programs, cultivate exchange perspectives and provide a maximum benefit to society. The severity, prevalence, and the incurability of the HIV/AIDS (and certain STDs) epidemic require widespread knowledge, exposure, and a change in human behavior for the social good of humanity. Our campaign highlights significant factors of activity, increases contact with extension services, influences strong community-level structural variables that condition the transition from knowledge to practice, and benefits social-market networks that foster social support for increasing healthy behaviors among diverse characteristics of society.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic is arguably the greatest health crisis of our time. The R.A.P on AIDS Campaign will look to the Hip Hop & Entertainment industry to help lead this fight against HIV/AIDS with our youth. We will solicit several celebrities in the field of entertainment to help us get the word out one city at a time.
WHY JOIN THE FIGHT?
R.A.P on AIDS social marketing campaign delivers both information and motivation that encourages an individual decision to take action. Our campaign promotes a consistent positive collaboration with high profile entertainers that hold reputational positions as “legitimizers” of community desires, wants, and practices. In our effort to create a major difference in HIV/AIDS/STDs prevention, our campaign interlocks entertainment, education, and responsible life choices in order to create a health consciousness that turns knowledge into behavior that promotes the social good of society. Therefore, we have tailored our campaign to maximize the urban entertainment culture, power, and influence to better inform our youth about healthy living practices, and encourage the substantial use of the solution.
The severity, prevalence, and the incurability of the HIV/AIDS (and certain STDs) epidemic require widespread knowledge, exposure, and a change in human behavior for the social good of humanity. Our research reveals that entertainers and their position can be helpful in the fight against HIV/AIDS/STDs and that an important dimension of power, consumer brands, and community influence has been ignored in key community sectors R.A.P on AIDS recognizes that urban entertainment leadership, power, and influence is a complex phenomenon, and doesn’t assume that the artists authority alone impacts broader community influence. Yet, we believe that Hip Hop artists reveal a slice of how success is unbelievably sexy, empowering, and enjoyable, and can stimulate a call to action that inspires all people to live healthy lifestyles. Therefore, R.A.P on AIDS has a relatively simple goal of engaging artists in providing reputational legitimacy to our campaign message, product recommendations, and informative entertainment activities in order to heighten awareness and motivate people to act in socially responsible ways.
Together, R.A.P on AIDS will help communities use their structure and resources to provide tangible opportunities for citizen participation in a common purpose that ushers in a new era of responsibility, encourage greater effort and cooperation, and implements innovative approaches regarding health promotion and welfare that benefits all members of society.