AIDS Walk is a walkathon fundraiser that raises money to combat the AIDS epidemic. The funds raised from AIDS Walks usually benefit a local AIDS service organization (such as Gay Men's Health Crisis, Whitman-Walker Clinic or the AIDS Project Los Angeles), which provide services and advocacy for local community residents who are infected with HIV. They are also often credited for being effective tools of public outreach, community empowerment, and education for the issues surrounding AIDS.
AIDS Walk fundraisers are a primarily American phenomenon because the United States has no nationalized healthcare system, and the services provided by local AIDS service organizations may not be otherwise accessible to people who are HIV positive.
Famous quotes containing the words aids and/or walk:
“Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.”
—Amanda Heggs, British AIDS sufferer. Quoted in Guardian (London, June 12, 1989)
“Only in America ... do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles—and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn’t their fault they were given a gift like speech—look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)