The Origin

In November 2010, eight passionate young activists from around the world gathered in London for the Global Youth Summit—a program operated by the British Council dedicated to enhancing global youth advocacy. During that week, we were entrusted with one small task: finding a dynamic way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. So after a life-changing week of working together, Ripple Effect was born.

Throughout the week, we agreed that the key to HIV/AIDS prevention was peer education, but that peer education alone was not quite enough. We wanted to push peer education one step further. Through our outreach, we don’t just want to peer educate, rather, we want to make peer educators. We want every person that we reach to spread the word about HIV/AIDS. We want to create a Ripple Effect.

This is where you come in. By taking the Ripple Effect Pledge, you can help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. It doesn’t matter who you are, and it doesn’t matter how you do it, but we want you to publicly declare how you will educate those around you about the risks posed by HIV/AIDS. Whether you’re a parent pledging to educate their children, a teenager pledging to send a Facebook message to ten friends, a political leader pledging to educate their constituents as part of their campaign, or a celebrity musician pledging to educate their fans about the risks of HIV/AIDS at every concert, we want you to pledge to fight HIV/AIDS in your own way.

To help you do this, we have started this website to equip you with key tools necessary to start your own HIV-prevention campaign. Learn, think, pledge, and read about the HIV/AIDS advocacy that we have been doing in our own communities. We hope that this provides you with the inspiration, the innovation, and the motivation to create change in your community.

HIV started as a ripple. Let’s end it with one.

-Jacob and the Ripple Effect Team