A number of RAICES (Resources, Acceptance, Inclusion, Community, Education, and Services) members participated in a call to action to end homophobia, transphobia and the stigma of HIV/AIDS in the Latino community along Cermak Road in Cicero on Jan. 26.
One of Project VIDA’s heath-education campaigns, RAICES (Resources, Acceptance, Inclusion, Community, Education, and Services) is, according to its website, “a youth-led social marketing campaign around HIV/AIDS in Cicero and Berwyn.”
The members of RAICES who participated in the day’s call to action were Emmanuel Garcia, project coordinator at RAICES; Cesar Robles, Morton College gay-straight alliance’s president; and Christopher Avalos and Reyna Ortiz, core members of RAICES.
The Illinois Department of Public Health’s Red Ribbon Quality of Life Endowment Fund financed the campaign to educate people because of the increasing numbers of HIV/AIDS cases in the Latino community. RAICES chose a poster campaign titled “Everyone should be accepted” as their way to raise awareness in Cicero and neighboring Berwyn. The poster was created by a group of LGBTQ youth from Cicero who are a part of a youth group that RAICES formed whose members come from all over the Chicagoland area, Garcia remarked.
Every Saturday since Dec. 28, RAICES members have been visiting businesses along Cermak Road to inquire if they would display the poster at their store. Most of the businesses have said yes and they immediately placed the poster where their patrons could easily see it, according to Garcia. Garcia said that the few businesses that have declined did so because the manager wasn’t present or their corporate policy states that all requests such as the one RAICES’ was making have to go through their corporate offices.
RAICES representatives speak Spanish when appropriate as they query each business owner/manager about the poster campaign. One of the requests that they make is that the poster is displayed for a minimum of three months. According to Garcia, the poster is featured in more than 75 businesses along Cermak Road.
RAICES is looking to expand the poster campaign beyond Cicero and Berwyn to other majority Latino communities/neighborhoods in the Chicagoland area. A Cicero based LGBTQ town hall is also in the planning stages. At the town hall, RAICES representatives will be presenting the results of their poster campaign.
See www.projectvida.org/raices and Facebook for more information.