NYCAAP Training Focus Is On Prevention

By Tanjua Damon

The choices youths have to make today can be difficult. Peer pressure and lack of information can put them in danger without them really knowing it.

NYCAAP (Newtown Youth Creating AIDS Awareness for Peers) members hope to help in the good decision making their peers will encounter through the education they can provide on the HIV/AIDS virus.

 NYCAAP members spent last Friday learning and understanding the importance of HIV/AIDS prevention during training at the C.H. Booth Library. The group is offered through Newtown Youth Services and is available to all high school students who want to be involved.

The group of high school students will bring what they have learned to the Newtown community through various avenues. The training session brought HIV/AIDS professionals to Newtown to discuss the virus and ways to prevent it.

Jane Burgess, director of Connecticut AIDS Education & Training Center at the Yale School of Nursing, gave students the facts of HIV and AIDS at the training session. She also explained that prevention needs to be the key to educating students about HIV and AIDS.

“I think if people really think about when they want to have sex and why. If they don’t have sex they can’t get AIDS,” Ms Burgess said. “I think more emotional instability happens when you have sex too early.”

Sex does not just happen. It is a decision, according to Ms Burgess. Once the decision is made responsibility needs to be taken.

“There are a whole series of decisions people make. Sex is the last step,” she said. “There has to be a decision. It happens because people choose to do it. People have to own that decision.”

Eighth and tenth graders will receive information from NYCAAP members about HIV and AIDS during health classes. 

For those who are sexually active, using condoms properly is a key to preventing AIDS, according to Ms Burgess. Condoms have to be used every time.

Karina Danvers lives with AIDS. She shared her story with the NYCAAP members. She was 19 when she was infected by unprotected sex but did not know it. Mrs Danvers takes 24 pills a day, 168 a week, 672 a month, and 8,736 pills a year.

“This is a choice I don’t want you to make. I am the face behind the prescription,” Mrs Danvers said. “They really do a number on you. They are not easy to take.”

Mrs Danvers encouraged the members to make good choices and through education help their peers have the information to make the same good choices.

“If you really give yourself an opportunity you can make the correct choice. We don’t give you enough respect to make good choices,” Mrs Danvers said. “The choices we make every day of our life affect us forever. It’s never-ending.”

Any high school student wishing to join NYCAAP can call Newtown Youth Services at 270-4335.