1st of December!

picture from Google

The countdown to Christmas can officially begin (as if I haven't been counting the days since October) but not only is it the first Advent Calendar day, it's also World AIDS Day. Last year in school, my group had to organise an event to raise awareness of AIDS to young people in our school. We did quite well, and had almost every class come by to our little exhibition (not all of them because we only had until ten to two). We weren't given any kind of budget by our 'boss', who told us what to do etc, which was sort of stupid on his part but oh well. So we had to think of  ways to raise some money to pay for flyers and posters. In the end we ended up doing a bake sale, but I also had an idea of getting a little extra cash. I wrote to my uncle, who knows a handful of celebs, some of which he is close enough to call his friends (not.jealous.at.all) and asked him if he could maybe arrange a couple of free tickets to see Elton John's concert in Luxembourg last year on the 2nd of December. He said he'd see what he would do, and sure enough my lovely uncle managed to get enough tickets for practically my whole family to see the concert, plus one extra that I could then sell for some extra money for my project. So naturally I was over the moon. We ended up having some money left over, which we then donated to the Red Cross (our event 'boss'), which made us feel all nice and giving. It felt nice having done a little something to inform people, and ourselves, about AIDS. It actually amazed me how little most people knew! Some people we asked had crazy theories on how people got it, where it started etc, and we managed to squish any stereotypes that just weren't true. We also had a bunch of red strips of paper, where everyone could write a little thought or saying, and then we folded them to look like the red ribbons. I know it's not much, but at least now more people are aware of what AIDS is really about.

Our Father Christmas Advent Calendar