Thirty-six year old Graham Smith is the Chief Executive of AIDS Concern, Hong Kong's first non-governmental AIDS organisation. AIDS Concern has been promoting safer sex and HIV/AIDS awareness among MSM since the organization began in 1990.
Fridae catches up with him via email to find out more about AIDS awareness and the GLBT community in Hong Kong.
About AIDS Concern
æ: Can you tell us more about AIDS Concern; and when and why it was set up?
graham: AIDS Concern was established in 1990. It was set up by a mixed group of concerned individuals who felt that Hong Kong needed a community response to the local AIDS epidemic. We began providing a hotline service using trained volunteers and giving educational talks. Several of the founding members had worked for AIDS groups overseas.
æ: What are AIDS Concern's aims and achievements to date?
graham: AIDS Concern has always placed a strong emphasis on community involvement and participation. We aim to deliver targeted prevention programmes to those most vulnerable to HIV infection and practical support programmes for those already infected. We have three on-going outreach prevention programmes targeting men who have sex with men, customers and keepers in the local sex industry and cross-border travelers.
Major achievements include; negotiating with gay saunas to secure the free distribution of condoms and lubricant to their customers, Hong Kong's first outreach HIV antibody testing service delivered in gay saunas, helping with the establishment of Hong Kong's first formal self-help group run by people with HIV/AIDS.
æ: How has AIDS Concern affected the gay community, especially in HongKong/China/Asia?
graham: Our outreach prevention programme targeting men who have sex with men is the most established and longest running of our three prevention services. Consequently it is the programme, which has brought about the most noticeable changes.
If you visit a gay sauna in Hong Kong and find a free condom and lubricant available the chances are it has been provided by AIDS concern. We also offer the only gay-run HIV antibody testing service delivered free of charge to gay sauna users. We have a policy of employing members of the gay community in all our outreach programmes targeting men who have sex with men. This includes a team of four part-time workers who do outreach prevention work in public toilets.
Our aim is to generate some sense of ownership of the AIDS prevention programme among the gay community and also some genuine self-determination. We have also put quite a lot of effort into facilitating the involvement of gay men in a recent community based needs assessment run by the Hong Kong Coalition of AIDS Service Organisations.
æ: How has the HK GLBT community played a part in AIDS Concern?
graham: At all levels of the organisation; both volunteers and staff. As well as working directly in programmes targeting men who have sex with men people volunteer for other service areas such as support programmes for people with AIDS and our hotline service. AIDS Concern welcomes anyone of any sexual orientation to join.
æ: What sort of difficulties have you encountered with an AIDS group in terms of governmental policies and societal attitudes?
graham: Perhaps the main one is the tendency towards avoidance of the AIDS issue which is indicative of the low level of acceptance of both people with HIV/AIDS and of the GLBT community. AIDS is perceived as a massive stigma and hence vulnerable communities are understandably reluctant to be associated with the issue. Ironically this puts the gay community on the same side of the fence as the government since both are keen to downplay the extent of the gay community's vulnerability to HIV infection. The only real way round this is to give control of AIDS prevention work among men who have sex with men to members of the affected community. That way they are less likely to perceive the resulting interventions as stigmatising.
Community
æ: What do you think we need most in Asia's gay and lesbian community?
graham: I have been very fortunate to witness the growth of a more confident and organised gay community in Hong Kong over the 12 years that I have been living here. In particular in recent years there has been more collaboration between the gay groups and a more co-coordinated response on a political level. A good example of this was during the last election campaign when a coalition of GLBT groups petitioned candidates for their views of GLBT issues and published the results in the press. I know that collaboration can be hard at times but I would love to see more of this; I find the men and women involved in such campaigns very impressive.
æ: What advice would you give to someone who is trying to come to terms with his or her sexuality?
æ: Do you or have you worked with other gay or lesbian community groups? How?
graham: I was recently responsible for co-coordinating a taskforce on 'men who have sex with men' which operated under the Hong Kong government's Committee on AIDS Prevention and Care. We wanted to show the authorities that gay community participation in AIDS strategy planning was possible. To achieve this we invited all local gay groups to send a representative to join our taskforce. It was quite a demanding task that we set ourselves; to formulate some strategic priorities for AIDS prevention work targeting MSM in Hong Kong.
Each of our resulting priorities was based on a process of consultation within the gay community. This was quite a significant development for a number of reasons. It represented the first time that a taskforce on a government AIDS committee was composed entirely of people from the community whose needs the taskforce was set up to address. I think this is important because it puts us in control of determining our own needs rather than having others determine them for us.
æ: Have you ever participated in any pro-gay or lesbian events/parties/workshops? If so, which?
graham: AIDS Concern has been fortunate to have had a lot of support from the gay community over the years. In particular we have held a series of successful fundraising and awareness parties in gay nightclubs. As an organiser of such events I get to meet a lot of very interesting members of the community who are great fun to work with and who donate a lot of their time to making these events work.
About Graham
æ: Do you believe in monogamous or open relationships? Are you in one?
graham: For me believing in monogamous relationships is a bit like believing in God; you have to take it on faith that they actually exist. No just kidding.!
æ: What's your favourite CD?
graham: Currently listening to jazz singer Stacey Kent; a great voice to spend a lazy Sunday morning with.
æ: What kind of pet do you have? Why?
graham: I've had several unsuccessful attempts at keeping goldfish; I thought they looked rather cool next to my orange iMac. Friends suggested that their chances of survival would have been a lot higher if I hadn't named them Herpes and Syphilis.
Aprs Interview
æ: Tell us something about your first sexual experience?
graham: I'm really looking forward to it, *grin.
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