Action for AIDS is the first organisation working with gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in the area of sexual health promotion, in Singapore. As the organisation enters their 25th year of operations, they’ve evolved their functions and objectives to include greater coordination and collaboration, focusing on delivering complex prevention and care programmes in an increasingly globalised and inter-connected world.
For a country that is considered a regional and international hub and where international travel is a simple weekend activity, the staff and volunteers at Action for AIDS understand the need to be connected with the wider MSM community.
“Understanding and working with the diversity of sexualities and cultures within our society has always been an important focus for our organisation.” Said Joe Wong, Action for AIDS, Programme Executive. “We need to work even closer with stakeholders and community partners in these times when there is increasing HIV epidemic among MSM.”
Over the coming months, the team at Action for AIDS is aiming to reach out even more to the MSM community in Singapore by engaging them in campaigns, events and workshops. These events and collaboration will serve as constant reminders that HIV is real and it is close within the MSM community.
Within their organisation, the MSM team does venue-based outreach, online-outreach, venue-based Anonymous Testing, as well as many other programmes for MSM and transgender sex workers and Young MSM.
An example of this is “Project Choice: Battlefield” ( www.projectchoice.sg). In this project, members of the team provided customers of gay clubs and saunas with the key messages of regular HIV testing, knowing their HIV status, staying negative and living healthy as PLHIV and endeavoured to change the community’s perception of HIV infection.
This project was conducted in addition to the regular activities of providing condoms, anonymous HIV testing, educational ‘talk shows’ for HIV awareness and education.
Over many years, Action for AIDS has connected with increasingly greater numbers of MSM online through relevant social media platforms and online communication tools – achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness of their health promotion strategies.
Project Choice (www.facebook.com/projectchoicesg) was specifically designed for MSM, it delivers up-to-date news on HIV in the region to their target audience on the page.
For more information and to find out more about Action for AIDS and their work:
Tel: +65 6254 0212
Fax: +65 6256 5903
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.afa.org.sg
Facebook: www.facebook.com/afasingapore
Photo Caption 1: Joe Wong and the MSM Team at Project Choice campaign launch, Avalon on Sundays, 1 December 2012, World AIDS Day
Photo Caption 2: Caught in a Spot: Syphilis educational talkshow with AFA Ambassador, Mistevious – Q & A session, Avalon on Sundays, 31 March 2013
