ViiV Healthcare has announced a new campaign, and theGrio has a first look at the initiative that has celebrities like Tina Knowles-Lawson, Jalen Rose, and more attached.
Entitled “Me in You, You in Me,” the campaign taps various celebrities, influencers, and advocates to help share HIV awareness. “We don’t talk about HIV prevention enough,” the clip states. “We brought strangers together to talk anonymously.”
“In a social experiment aimed at stripping away our culture’s pre-existing biases and stigmas, participants were asked to build a connection sight unseen,” the official announcement sent to theGrio explains.
The participants were then “tasked” to find common ground in regards to HIV prevention and community, discussing topics like ways they, “want to be loved, how they want to be seen, what makes them feel powerful, how they want to be desired, and their reasons for participating in the campaign.”
Weeks after, the participants met face to face for the first time, highlighting an “impactful showcase of shared human experience.”
Participants in the campaign include Tina Knowles-Lawson (matriarch, businesswoman, and mother of Beyoncé Knowles), NBA player turned sports analyst Jalen Rose, Kalen Allen (actor and comedian best known from The Ellen Show), photographer Juan Veloz, trans TikTok activist/influencer Ve-ondre Mitchell, and model and sex worker Reno Gold.
“When it comes to HIV prevention, we all play a piece in that,” one of the participants states in the clip. “Every single one of us on this earth.” Through powerful shots of the participants meeting each other, getting deep, and accepting each other for who they are, the campaign makes its point of inclusion.
Per the announcement, the “Me in You, You in Me” campaign “aims to highlight the stigmas surrounding HIV and emphasize the immediate need to prioritize mainstream media and entertainment narratives that actively seek to reduce stigma and bias, especially for Black women among underrepresented groups.”
For more on “Me in You, You in Me,” head to the official site, here. Watch the video below:
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