Making AIDS history
International Peace Tile Project raises HIV/AIDS awareness

By Pryce Hadley, 16, and Anna Burnett, 15, with contributions from Kelsie Coccia, 13; Adam Gannon, 13; Clint Remsburg, 13, and Emma Roy, 13

A group of local children gaze up at a vibrant collage of decorated wooden tiles at the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum in Marquette. The tiles contain messages from children very much like themselves, though under much more dire circumstances. The tiles were created by children halfway across the world to raise awareness of the pandemic that constantly threatens their lives, HIV/AIDS.

Phrases such as “Kissing doesn’t kill: greed and indifference do,” “See into tomorrow,” and “We all deserve a second chance,” provide insight into the lives of the artists and give voice to the millions of children who are at risk from HIV/AIDS. According to UNICEF, more than 500,000 children under the age of fifteen have died of AIDS and more than two million children under the age of fifteen are living with the HIV/AIDS virus.

Even though the tiles focus on a sobering topic, they convey the hope and optimism of their creators. One tile depicts the image of the earth surrounded by a sea of people with a large orange heart in the lower left-hand corner. Others include warnings and many feature the word “hope.” Each of the eight by eight-inch tiles reflects the unique personality of the child who made it. Some consist of simple images painted on wood while others are more intricate with lace, beads and magazine clippings.

The museum is hosting a collection of 48 tiles in recognition of World AIDS Day, December 1, 2005. The tiles were brought to the museum through the International Peace Tiles Project, an initiative that seeks to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention among youth. Already the project has involved over 1,000 youth from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Costa Rica, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, and the United States. Most of the tiles at the Children’s Museum were made in India.

On World AIDS Day, major displays of peace tiles were unveiled in Johannesburg, South Africa; Geneva, Switzerland and Jaipur, India. Many smaller exhibits, such as the one in Marquette, were displayed worldwide.
Louise Bourgault, professor of communication and performance studies at Northern Michigan University, helped bring the exhibit to Marquette. Bourgault first heard of the project through an Internet list serve. She supervised NMU student Wendy Gaudette, who organized the exhibition in conjunction with the Children’s Museum.

“This issue is of great urgency at the moment because there are worldwide 40,000,000 cases of HIV and AIDS. Also it’s an issue that affects people in our own country,” Bourgault said. “I felt that this was interesting because it was involving younger children, and that it would have a very positive message and it would help children in the Marquette area relate to children in other parts of the world.”

Peace Tiles Project Creator and Coordinator Lars Hasselblad Torres of Montpelier, Vermont was inspired to start the project as a way to raise HIV/AIDS awareness through art.

“I’ve always had this passion for the visual arts,” Torres said. “At the same time, I’ve been an educator and really enjoy working with young people, and thought that there might be a way to combine my passion for the arts and my enthusiasm for working with young people in a global awareness campaign around HIV/AIDS.”

Torres hopes the project will reach young people of widely varying experience with HIV/AIDS.

“The goal of this year’s effort is to enable young people to express their experience with HIV/AIDS on whatever dimension. Those might be (youth) who are living with HIV/AIDS. It might also be those who are at risk; they sort of know it’s out there and they’re scared or they’re totally oblivious. And also for those who may not be at risk; they know it’s out there and they want to send messages of hope to other young people around the world.”

A lot of work and collaboration has gone into the project.

“For World AIDS Day I coordinated the activities in terms of developing the basic materials, helping to find artists who could go to communities to work, helping to figure out where the murals would go, raising money and distributing money, creating the on-line forum for publicity purposes, as well as getting people to share their stories around peace tiles,” Torres said.

One of Torres’ international collaborators is Bhawani Shanker Kusum, Secretary and Executive Director of the Indian non-government organization, Gram Bharati Samiti, which translates to the Society for Rural Development.

“He’s an incredibly committed guy to rural issues affecting women and youth, and saw a connection between what he’s trying to do and what peace tiles was all about. You might call him the driving force,” Torres said.

Kusum set up six workshops in the rural area surrounding Jaipur, the capital of the Indian state of Rajasthan. He contacted instructors, developed the strategy for creating the tiles, and involved over 600 children ages 13 through 19.

Kusum was amazed at the quality of the children’s work.

“I was thrilled to see their creativity while making the peace tiles,” Kusum said. “I had never expected such a wonderful creativity among the small kids. It was just beyond my imagination.”

Torres feels it is important for the project to concentrate on India due to its severe HIV/AIDS infection rate. With 5.3 million infected people, India’s rate is second only to South Africa.

“The reason why India is important is because it’s the place on the planet where the next demographic bomb is supposed to explode,” Torres said. “Already in South Africa, mortality rates, which is to say the number of people dying within the population, has surpassed infection rates. It’s how you know the HIV/AIDS pandemic has reached a critical level. India is the place where that’s supposed to happen next.”

Kusum believes that it is crucial to educate youth in the prevention of HIV/AIDS for three reasons.

“One, they are innocent ones and have been orphaned without any fault,” he said. “Two, they belong to a new generation that must be protected from the risks, and three, they are the most efficient group to disseminate the message.”

Torres believes that peace tiles and other awareness projects will have a lasting impact on the fight against AIDS.

“It’s an issue that’s staring the world in the face. Peace tiles is one of thousands of activities people are doing, and if thousands more people take individual action on an issue like HIV/AIDS then international mechanisms for fighting AIDS will be a lot more motivated to do their work,” he said. “Soon enough you’ll have a global mass movement to actually make AIDS history.”

The project has strengthened Kusum’s optimism for fighting the disease.

“It’s a very unique and wonderful experience to involve the younger generation through art in the fight against AIDS,” he said. “It has given us a bright indication of hope to cope with the pandemic.”