AIDS, Service, and Transformation at The National Service-Learning Conference

Through Y-RISE: The HIV/AIDS and Service-Learning Initiative, NYLC has worked to connect service and HIV/AIDS education. On March 25, 2006, at The 17th Annual National Service-Learning Conference, attendees of HIV/AIDS: What They Never Taught You saw just how powerful that connection could be.

Instead of hammering their audience with fears of dying from AIDS, facilitator Jimmy Biddle (pictured), Education Director for Life-Zone.org, and his guests drove home the harsh realities of living with AIDS, candidly sharing their experiences as long-term survivors. The approach seemed to resonate with the audience — many stuck around after the session to speak with presenters — more than any fear-based or detached, clinical approach.

In addition to covering the basics — from transmission and condoms to the biology of HIV — Biddle discussed the personal impact the disease has on his life. Though drugs are extending lives, those infected are never the same. Biddle drove this home, describing his 15-drug regiment that costs $5,000 a month, must be taken at life-disrupting intervals, and has toxic side effects. "If AIDS doesn’t kill you, the medicine will," he said.

"I’ve been on medication everyday of my life," added William Brawner, 26, a Certified Prevention Councilor who was infected through a blood transfusion when he was only 18 months old. "They have side effects — chills to night sweats to fevers."

Biddle also brought a unique perspective to the discussion of abstinence and safe sex, speaking from a place of caring rather than judgment. "If we spent more time talking about love and responsibility, we’d be talking a lot less about STDs," he told the crowd. "I’m talking about the love you have for your grandmother, brother, mother. Imagine what it is like to sit down and tell your mother you have AIDS. When I talk about abstinence, I’m talking about loving yourself."

Throughout the presentation, there was no self-pity. Jay Dagenhart, a sober methamphetamine addict who is also HIV positive, described his previous life in harsh terms — referring to himself as selfish and lacking self-respect. He described a period so dark and full of hatred that he even looked for infected men from whom he could contract the virus.

Dagenhart credits his addiction and HIV status with forcing him to change his life and bringing him "back to a place of self-love." He is now the President and Founder of the Philadelphia Meth Task Force and is dedicated to helping others. "If you can find a passion in your life that helps other people," he said, "you might find that it makes you more successful at whatever you do."

"I’m alive today not because of the medicine, but because of the work I do," Biddle said of his work in AIDS education. "I spent the first 10 years of this disease dying. Volunteerism is so amazing. It saved my life. Imagine what it could do for yours. You get back 10 times what it’s worth."