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By Jan Gabriel Castañeda The HIV crisis has gone on for four decades, and for four decades the world has struggled against it. Doctors, scientists, educators, policy makers, writers, artists -- people of all walks and all colors have, in their own ways, sought to make sense of this crisis and its relationship with society. From citizens to states, from medicine to prayer, from cures to cries for reform, people’s visions of how to respond to the crisis are as diverse as the people who bear its scars. The goal of this series is to give you a glimpse of these visions: the roles people of different passions and disciplines have played in this crisis that, as of March 2016 as recorded by the Department of Health’s Epidemiology Bureau, is infecting 25 Filipinos daily. To call compassion a dangerous temptation is a little odd, but it is something every advocate understands well. It’s the temptation to give without restraint, moved by the moral compulsion to serve a higher purpose and the natu...

Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart will be performed by the The Necessary Theatre in a series of runs to be held at The PETA Theater Center in the month of June. The Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) partners with LoveYourself in a collaborative endeavor combining theater and HIV awareness and advocacy. Discussions on HIV/AIDS to facilitate the audience’s comprehension of the play will be conducted by LoveYourself volunteers after the performance with the aim of creating dialogue and awareness on the state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Philippines. The Normal Heart’s plot, set in 1980s New York, revolves around the efforts of Ned Weeks, a writer and gay activist who struggles to establish an organization focused on raising awareness on what was then an unidentified disease that seemed to target homosexual men. The play highlights multiple issues, from the personal to the political, from the cultural to the biomedical. Characters in the play include a doctor/researcher wh...

What do you do on your free time? Any hobby? Do you like to party? Travel maybe? Make friends? Enjoy life?  This is our upward challenge -- VOLUNTEER, and still do everything else you enjoy doing.  STEP FORWARD. If you're like us, you've probably been thinking of volunteering for some time now. You aren't alone. Many of us were drawn into this advocacy because we knew we needed to help in some way, we knew we could do something different, to contribute something relevant and significant for the community. And when we became part of LoveYourself, when we dared to step forward with action -- that allowed us to do amazing things. STEP UP. LoveYourself is a growing community of passionate, committed volunteers who are taking on the issues that matter to people like us: self-worth, being MSM, and the escalating situation of HIV in the community. Our volunteers have one thing in common: they are all buoyed up by their love to reach out and help. At LoveYourself, you are w...