What is happening : 2009

Young People Celebrate World AIDS Day with help of dance4life programme

Over 400 young people marked World AIDS Day in Ireland at a hip hop and sexual health event in Ballyfermot, Dublin on December 1st.

The Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA) and The Base Youth Centre, Ballyfermot, teamed up to deliver the dance4life programme to 420 young people from schools and youth organisations in the area. At the event young people from local schools learned the dance4life hip-hop choreographed drill and participated in sexual health workshops. The event will be followed up with further sexual health workshops in the coming months.

This dance is the same dance taught to the 680,000 young people around the world who are also engaged in the dance4life programme. The programme is operating in 25 different countries, from places as far apart as Russia, Sierra Leone and Moldova.

Amel Yacef, Youth Health Programme Leader at the Base said, “I would like to welcome the volunteer dancers and DJs from dance4life to the Base. This is a really exciting event at the Base and we are delighted to be able to involve so many local young people. My hope is that our events held today to mark World AIDS Day will help inform young people about their sexual health.”

Ann Kennedy, dance4life co-ordinator with the IFPA said: “On world AIDS Day it is important for young Irish people to understand that HIV has no borders. It is a global issue that affects people in Ireland as well as overseas. On this day, however, we should encourage young people in Ireland to think about the circumstances of their peers living in the developing world. The key word is on World Aids Day is responsibility. Young people need to take responsibility for their own sexual health and protect themselves against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.”

In the last three months the dance4life programme has been delivered to over 1,650 young people in schools, youth organisations and third level institutions across the country. Plans for the future include delivering the programme to separated children seeking asylum.

The event in The Base Youth Centre today is a warm up for a much larger event which will take place next year. This worldwide dance4life event will take on the Saturday before World AIDS day and will involve dance events in each of the participating countries connected via satellite.

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