This year PT Foundation held it’s annual World AIDS Day celebration at Sungei Wang Plaza in Kuala Lumpur for the eleventh time.  The 2-day event marks this global occasion when 250 volunteers take over the shopping centre to distribute over 45,000 red ribbons and 20,000 pieces of information on HIV.  This year’s event saw amazing performances from community groups such as Nisha from PT Foundation who sang live to a captivated audience with an especially composed song focusing on stigma and discrimination.  Other performers who stole the show included an energetic performance from Rashdan Harith, great songs from the Soul Sisterz and fabulous musicians XXX – Malaysia’s owner world champion Mouth organists.  Very special appearances from Jaclyn Victor and Dayang Nurfaizah had the crowd dancing in the streets at the specially constructed stage on Fiesta Street.  The show also had some very special presenters with Azah and Yasmin Yussuff launching the event, followed by a great segment from the 3Rs on the first day.  Deborah Henry and Owen Yap showed their knowledge of HIV when presenting the first half of the second day with a quiz for the audience on HIV.  The final presenter was Will Quah who managed as always to draw the crowd in and get them donating to the cause while dancing along to the performances!  Hopefully next year he will sing as promised!

This year’s theme was focused on educating us all on our rights in relation to HIV – we have the right to knowledge, the right to know our status, the right to protect ourselves from HIV and the right to treatment if we are HIV positive.  To bring this to life at the event PT Foundation in partnership with International Planned Parenthood Federation offered members of the public the opportunity to do a HIV risk assessment to discover more about the HIV knowledge and also the level of risk of HIV infection they may have be exposed to.  Over 100 people took part on this exercise in English, Malay and Chinese.  PT Foundation was also offering a free anonymous HIV screening on site and all of the appointments were filled which shows that Malaysians are becoming more open to the idea of knowing their HIV status.

 Hisham Hussein from PT Foundation says of this year’s event –

 “This year saw more young people than ever come forward and volunteer for Red Carnival – over 250 of them got involved over the 2 days.  We are so proud to see so many young Malaysians understanding the importance of knowing about HIV and helping us at PT Foundation to educate the general public at Sungei Wang Plaza for Red Carnival”.

This years event saw valuable sponsorship for WHO and also the Embassy of Finland and PT Foundation hopes that there involvement in this year’s event will become an annual event.  Equipment, food, goodies and drinks were generously supplied by the following partners – Coca Cola, Unilever, Tan Chong, Body Shop, Malaysia AIDS Foundation, Melia Hotel, AJ Laris, Woon Leong and Mist Cooling Systems Sdn. Bhd.

Red Carnival is the biggest fundraising event of the year for PT Foundation and as funding has been cut in 2010 it is a vital income source to help run it’s programmes next year.  This year the event raised RM13,000 which will really help fund the HIV work PT has been doing for the past 21 years.  PT Foundation is very grateful to all who contributed.