The Red Whistle

Blow harder

     The Red Whistle is a campaign led by Niccolo Cosme to let Filipinos know better on what HIV is, how it is spreading fast nowadays, and also ways of preventing it from spreading further.  So last August 17, I went to a place in Makati named "Blackbird".  It's a small bar in San Antonio, Makati where you can enjoy listening to good music while also enjoying a delicious dishes that you would mistake them to be from a famous restaurant.  Nice, cozy, almost like a home away from home but having the extra comfort of their very courteous staff.  We were served with some of their famous pizza, spaghetti and chicken meals.

 

     After having our stomachs stuffed, we were given a brief discussion by Niccolo and his friends.  One of our speaker was a survivor of HIV for the past 7 years.  I was surprised because even though he had the virus for the past 7 years, he never gave up and even is a living example to all of us listening that night that it is a good thing to know about the HIV, but it is a lot better to spread the knowledge on how to stop it.  We were all given our red whistles which we could wear around our neck as a symbol of Niccolo's campaign to spread the news.  To "Spread the word, not the virus"; and as a person who's working in a call center world, it really helped a lot also in voicing out to my peers something about it.  I was even more shock when I found out that Philippines was actually one of the top 5 countries where HIV was spreading fast.  There are actually 6-7 persons recorded everyday in our country with HIV.  Can you believe how many persons that would be in a year?  About 2,190 to 2,555 persons!  So can you imagine the number of people we could actually save if we raised the awareness?  By making people aware that it is actually a good thing to practice safe sex and let people know that HIV is not something to joke about.

Angel and Niccolo

       As I went to work that night, I wore the red whistle around my neck to check how many people would actually ask me about it.  And to my surprise there were some who actually did, curious to why I had a whistle.  I gave told them about the what I learned from hearing Niccolo's teachings.  And I even gave them the pack that was provided to me which had 2 more whistles.  Hopefully they would also spread the word about HIV as I was able to do to them.  Spread the word not the virus!  Blow hard, blow harder!  ^_^

Thanks Sai for our makeup ^_^