40 years of community leadership, within and far beyond AIDS Vancouver, gave us the opportunity we have had over the past year to consider who and what we will be into the future. We called it Vision Our Future, a process first stewarded by Sandy Laframboise.

We started by asking “How can we support people living with HIV in 2023 and beyond?”. Over 100 people living with HIV, the Indigenous Committee and the peer navigator team here at AIDS Vancouver took the time to share their perspectives, and a dedicated committee brought their own experience to help us make sense of it all.

The answers to this question have become our new purpose, values, name and look. Together, they lay the groundwork for how we will continue to show up for people living with HIV - and our broader communities - for years to come.

Our role is to support and empower you, and the communities around you, to make sure the ways HIV and HIV stigma impact your life do not make you smaller.

Whether or not we are living with HIV, the virus and the stigma can make it harder to have the sex we want, build a family (chosen or otherwise), get the healthcare we need, and be our full selves without fear. And we are here to change that. 

We have four values that are overlapping on purpose, and put people living with HIV first. This is just as important in the work we do with HIV-positive people, as in our work with HIV-negative people, because it is people living with HIV that founded the very idea of HIV prevention. Whether its people living with HIV who fought hard to become parents to HIV-negative babies, the original edition of ‘how to have sex in an epidemic’, or undetectable = untransmissible campaign – all of that was brought to us by people living with HIV.

This purpose and these values helped us make the very big decision about what our new name would be.

Welcome, all of you, to Ribbon Community.

With this new name, we move from AIDS to Ribbon. A symbol, not a diagnosis. We move from Vancouver to Community: a group of us, defined by so much more than geography.

 

In short, we are Ribbon. In long form, we are Ribbon Community. And in both cases, Ribbon Community is all of us.

Using the concept of ribbon in our name and look is an intentional choice to pull the past, present, and future of the HIV response and AIDS movement together, connecting the many communities that make Ribbon Community possible. Our logo is the red ribbon in the form of an r, rather than the ‘v’ shape of the originals developed by a group of artists called Visual AIDS. This group wanted to do something in the face of daily funerals, hospital visits, and wondering who would get sick next, and it was them that created this symbol, made famous at the 1991 Tony Awards, and later made by the hundreds at ribbon bees and community events throughout the world.

The concept of ribbon allows us to reference HIV and AIDS without saying them, in order to offer some discretion in a world that still carries too much stigma, without losing what has brought us all together.

Whether you like this name – or you don’t – we are holding space for that and the many other feelings as all of us adjust to change. As we embrace our new purpose and values, and yes, our new name, we want to assure you that if you are looking for AIDS Vancouver, we are still here. We will be continuing our usual programs and services, making sure they reflect out new purpose and values. Even without AIDS in our name, we will continue to include the important lessons of AIDS and AIDS activism, as much as we can know them, and support people who have a past or present AIDS diagnosis, and those for whom the AIDS days loom large.

Today is a celebration of what has been built, and what we can build into the future. Ribbon Community is here to support and empower, and we want to hear your ideas for our communities and we want to know where you would like us to be on your journey. 

Thank you for being here, thank you for building this…. And welcome to Ribbon Community.

More information