This Saturday, join thousands of your friends and neighbors for the 5K Florida AIDS Walk and Music Festival, a heritage event created to raise awareness about the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic which remains at crisis proportions in Florida. The Walk and Music Festival raise money to support those Floridians—your friends and neighbors—who are living with HIV/AIDS.
Participants in the Florida AIDS Walk and Music Festival comprise a diverse family who recognize that HIV/AIDS affects us all people, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, and all the other things that make us unique.
The Walk and Music Festival is a way of uniting and make a difference to those who need help the most, your friends and neighbors.
The Walk and Music Festival consists of a five-Kilometer Walk that kicks off at Greater Fort Lauderdale’s South Beach Park. Staging for the Walk begins at 9:30 a.m. After leaving South Beach Park, the route continues north along SR A1A, and then returning back to its point of origin.
All—that is, 100 percent—of the funds raised from the Florida AIDS Walk stay in Florida, to benefit the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Broward House, the Pride Center at Equality Park, SunServe, Latinos Salud, the South Beach AIDS Project, the Children’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center, and other local service agencies and groups.
Likewise, the Florida AIDS Walk benefits ongoing LGBT education, advocacy, specialized services (that meet the needs of the economically disadvantaged, marginalized youth, seniors, and peoples of differing abilities), specialized care for youth living with HIV/AIDS in a family-centered environment, and improving the lives of persons living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS.
The Music Festival features world-class entertainment, including headlining performer and 10-time Grammy Award-winner Chaka Khan, the Queen of Funk Soul, and the talented and inspiring Tony Award-nominated Sheryl Lee Ralph, whose award-winning work includes the legendary Broadway musical “Dreamgirls,” and her one-woman play, “Sometimes I Cry,” a production written and performed by Ralph that explores the lives, loves, and losses of women infected and affected by HIV.
For more information, visit floridaaidswalk.org.
By the Numbers
More than 40,000 HIV/AIDS cases are diagnosed in the U.S. each year
4,000 of those cases are diagnosed in Florida alone
Florida ranks 3rd among states for highest number of HIV/AIDS cases (after NY and California)
Broward ranks 2nd among Florida counties for the highest number of HIV/AIDS cases (after Miami-Dade)
The latest statistics of the global HIV and AIDS epidemic published by the World Health Organization in November 2011, referring to 2010 (the most recent year for which reporting is available):
| Estimated Number | |||
| People living with HIV/AIDS | 34 million | ||
| Proportion of adults living with HIV/AIDS who were women | 50 percent | ||
| Children living with HIV/AIDS | 3.4 million | ||
| People newly infected with HIV | 2.7 million | ||
| Children newly infected with HIV | 390,000 | ||
| AIDS deaths | 1.8 million | ||
Orphans (age 0-17) due to AIDS (2009) 16.6 million
