Ryan Fisher from Wieden and Kennedy spent a month in Recife, a city in the North East of Brazil, working to develop a communications campaign for an HIV/AIDS NGO called GTP+, with their host agency INATA. Ryan came to Recife to work with GTP+ to help to decrease discrimination amongst the population as a whole about products and food stuffs prepared by workers who are living with HIV and AIDS. The primary objective of Ryan’s placement was to create a campaign to promote the Solidarity Kitchen with a view to strengthen the activities and sustainability of GTP+.
Before Ryan arrived in Brazil he sat down and wrote a list of objectives that he was hoping he would benefit from spending a month in a completely new environment. The list included obvious things like leadership and communications skills, strategic development, cultural insight and, of course, doing some good. He’s already discovered that what he has gained far exceeds these. Not only has his experience impacted hugely on the way he perceives communications in general, but the way he views the world.
This is GTP+ the charity I was working. GTP+ mainly works with gay men, transvestites and transexuals who have HIV and AIDS. They work to help raise the human rights of those living with HIV and AIDS – help raising peoples self esteem and help people get back on their feet once they have been diagnosed. The realities of HIV and AIDS in Brasil are tough to come to terms with. Whilst it is a very open culture where race, culture, sexual orientation are all embraced and accepted there is a lack of understanding or education about the realities of HIV and AIDS. Many people find themselves getting divorced, fired, kick out of their homes so they turn to drugs, prostitution and alcohol. The man in the picture is Wladimir, he is one of the founding partners of GTP+ his partner caught HIV around 15 years ago when the virus was in its early stages. Noone would treat him and he died in a cab with Wladimir on the way to the hospital. He had lost half his body weight in 6 weeks. When it came to his funeral they put hot coals on his coffin and burnt it. Since then Wladimir has been campaigning the human rights of those infected.
The project I was working on was called The Solidarity Kitchen. It is a kitchen inside the building of GTP+ with the primary function of providing free meals for those on anti-retroviral drugs, it is also open to the public serving really good meals for a really good price. It also gives those with the virus a place to work helping to build their self-esteem and confidence and giving them an income.. The brief was to get more revenue from the kitchen in order that GTP+ could become more sustainable and allow them to do more work to help those with HIV and AIDS.