The Center for Biological Diversity and – most importantly – 3,000 volunteers are distributing 200,000 free Endangered Species Condoms across the United States (in 50 states) to highlight how unsustainable human population growth is driving species extinct at a cataclysmic rate. They are supposed to help people understand the impact of overpopulation on other species and give them a chance to take action in their own life.

The condom packages, featuring slogans like wrap with care… save the polar bear, are being distributed by a network of 3,000 volunteers ranging from ministers to grandmothers to healthcare providers to college students and biologists. The condoms were and are handed out at concerts, bars, universities, spiritual groups, local events, and farmer’s markets. Along with two condoms, each nicely desidned package contains information on the species, facts about overpopulation and the extinction crisis, and suggestions on how the human population can be stabilized.

Six different packages were made with drawings of six species that are listed as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: the polar bear, the jaguar (“Wear a jimmy hat, save the big cat”), the American burying beetle (“Cover your tweedle, save the burying beetle”), the snail darter (“Hump smarter, save the snail darter”), the coquí guajón rock frog (“Use a stopper, save the hopper”), and the spotted owl (“Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl”).

Since the campaign has proven to be very successful, the organization has decided to double the number of condoms given out:

“We’ve been overwhelmed with volunteers,” said Serraglio. “We expected 100, but got over 3,000 in just a month. The demand far exceeded our first run of 100,000 condoms. We’ll be producing another 100,000 as soon as the first batch hits the streets.”

Hit EndangeredSpeciesCondoms.com to read more about the actual goals of the campaign and while you’re there, you may also decide to distribute condoms along the other volunteers or simply enter a competition to win a lifetime condom supply (I thought it was interesting noting that this has been set at 2000 condoms…).

And here are the campaign artworks plus slogans:

Wear a jimmy hat… save the big cat

Cover your tweedle… save the burying beetle

Hump smarter… save the snail darter

Wear a condom now… save the spotted owl

Wrap with care… save the polar bear

Use a stopper… save the hopper

Thanks to Randy, design credits Lori Lieber/image credit Endangered Species Print Project.

Storing condoms in the right place when going out is a stiff subject. After all you don’t want it to stick out of your wallet or in any other unsafe place. UK’s King Apparel suggests you to have your condom in your jeans in an inside stash pocket.

King is a streetwear label and as such they are in a great place to tackle teenage pregnancies and STD’s in the 15-18 year age range. To achieve the best results they partnered up with Want Respect? in 2007 and presented the jeans with a condom pocket I mentioned before.

Now, two years later, all of their jeans and shorts come with the pockets as a standard. What a success.

Here’s what King say about the project:

The project is a couple of years old now, but King wanted to de-stigmatise taking a condom out on a night out as it looks like the guy thinks he’s going to get lucky, when all he’s doing is being prepared – you never know… But they gave away a lanyard with a condom as well in the stores that stocked the jeans, they came attached to the jeans.

The King Apparel Jeans

Jeans Pocket

Shorts Pocket

By the way the pockets are branded with the heart shaped Want Respect? logo (as you can see in the pictures above) that has been designed by graffiti legend Mode2.

And Here’s the link to the complete lineup of products by King Apparel.

Thanks and via Robin.

The selected campaigns are from many different countries and the striking thing about them is the endless creativity and various means to raise the awareness and educate people in a fun way. At the same time these are some interesting strategies to actually get more and more people to use condoms.

The bottom line is the same everywhere: Use condoms, protect yourself, AIDS is still deadly and a horrible burden for anyone affected.

Prejudice is one of the worst side-effects – Denmark
Denmark’s AIDS-Fondet organised a neat little AIDS awareness campaign during World AIDS Day last year to fight prejudice and stigmatisation. The person inside the balloon wore a t-shirt saying: Prejudice is one of the worst side-effects.

Catch the sperm – Switzerland
Stopaids.ch launched a small game in 2001 with the “catchy” title catch the sperm.  The game produced for raising AIDS awareness among young people was an enormous success. 2001 more than 18 millions players from 104 countries downloaded the viral game.

The concept is really simple. Get ready and cover all the bad boys with condoms. Just like in real life. Up to today there are six various themes available, for example Carnival and Winter (as you’d expect for a swiss game). Catch the sperm can still be played and downloaded here (and it’s still good for some serious old school fun).

Condom ringtone – India
The condom ringtone is an Indian condom campaign that was launched back in August (of 2008) and has already done a lot for awareness in India (and the whole world). The ringtone was downloaded by 660′000 people and counting. It’s a solid piece of work brought to the world by the BBC World Service Trust and Bill Gates (listen in right here).

Condom tree – Australia
In an effort to promote safe sex among the Aboriginal community NCHS placed condoms on river gum and eucalyptus trees and helped local communities in accessing much needed contraception (image credit).

The human hour glass – France
Every ten seconds someone dies from HIV. Time is precious. Great and visually appealing campaign by Sidaction.

Take out a condom – Brazil
Outdoor posters with the word AIDS written all over it poppped up on a past World Aids Day all over the city in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The word consists of 500 condoms which could be removed by passengers. More than 8000 pedestrians interacted with the poster on that day.

Where’s AIDS – Brazil
Many of you will remember the book Where’s Waldo (or Wally). A Brazilian community used that theme for their Carnival campaign. Just you don’t see AIDS.

What do you do to protect yourself – France
Cycling being a popular form of transportation for the younger crowd, Act Up Paris organised a guerilla campaign in the night before World Aids Day 2007. Thousands of bicycle saddles were covered with an important message. And you, what do you do to protect yourself?

GI Jonny – UK
Another great campaign done by the BBC. G.I. Jonny was a viral HIV information campaign for the UK. The campaign was running from 1st of October until World Aids Day 2007 backed by Durex and Terrence Higgins Trust who provided 150′000 free condoms.

AIDS is still around – Canada
This one speaks for itself. AIDS is still around.

La tete de mort – France
La tete de mort (skull) is a campaign dating back to 2003.

These were some of the most brilliant AIDS awareness campaigns. Do you remember any good HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns? Would you add any to this list of brilliant ones?

Picture credits: follow the links to the organisations (Ads of the world/Coloribus/Osocio).

Many African organizations who are struggling to provide education about condom use as the tidal wave of HIV/AIDS on that continent just gets bigger, watched the American presidential race with great interest, all believing that Obama could be a real god-send in helping overturn some of the Bush policies on STD and birth control prevention.

Some of those policies have been cited for hindering STD prevention efforts, especially when it comes to condom education, which has led America’s national health watchdog, the Centers for Disease Control, to pull some of its condom information from its Web site. The director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation says “The U.S. administration has certainly succeeded in demonizing condoms rather than showing that they can be part of prevention of both unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.”

Under Bush, restrictions were placed on both national and international AIDS funding; any national or international agency funded or in need of funding from the US were sanctioned if they dared whisper the word abortion.

Abstinence-only education, which has not worked and has hampered family planning and STD prevention efforts, was the only education the current president would hear of. Not so Obama’s. Or as his aid put it: “We have been going in the wrong direction, and we need to turn it around and be promoting prevention and family planning services and strengthening public health.”

Although he has not come right out and stated exactly what he will do differently, to include about condom education, it is clear that Obama’s policies, as his representatives put it, will “reflect what works.” But with all the excitement about the coming changes, those same African agency leaders are not completely convinced that changes in policy will overcome all the problems they face in trying to educate their nations’ populations, especially given all the financial disasters awaiting America’s new president.

During history’s headiest, and certainly most expensive, political campaign, Republican candidate John McCain was asked “Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?” McCain‘s answer to the reporter who asked the question? After a long pause, all he could come up with was “You’ve stumped me.”

This led the most important pro-birth control organization in the US to hand out specially made condoms to political delegates, with a label that read “Protect yourself from John McCain”.

We will never know if perhaps those Humble Little Condoms did help get Barrack Obama elected, but the fact that he is being touted as  America’s “First African American” president does beg the question, “Is he in tune to his own community when it comes to condom use?” or more accurately, lack of condom use?
If not, he needs to be.

American blacks have the highest rate of STDs, to include HIV/AIDS, of any group in the US or any other Western nation for that matter, and the numbers just keep getting worse.   Just days before the election, the Center for Disease Control announced that 48% of black girls between the ages of 14-19 have an STD; black women suffer the highest rate of syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV of any group; about 70% of all American women who suffer from HIV/AIDS are black; AIDS is amongst the top three leading causes of death for black women.

Black men suffer even higher numbers: AIDS has doubled in that population in the 2000s; 2/3 of the black men who die while in prison suffered from HIV; from just 2006 to 2007, STD rates went up over 12% in black men. In other words, African Americans make up 12% of the US population, but they represent 50% of all AIDS cases in the US.

But what is a new president to do? Perhaps he should ask Pastor W. James Favorite, a courageous preacher whose church was built right after the American Civil War by freed slaves for freed slaves, a fact he believes makes it a very special place for his particular ministry.  Those slaves believed they could, with God’s help, bring themselves out of slavery, and into the mainstream, enjoying the same rights and priveleges as whites. That, sadly, has not always been the case.

Favorite serves one of the many many poor black communities in the American South – he is in Tampa, Florida, where 1 in every 85 residents is HIV positive – and besides trying to get his own flock to understand the need to practice safe sex, he preaches to his own, going place-to-place to try to get his fellow pastors to take their heads out of the sexual sand.  At one such meeting, he realized just how hard that was going to be, given he could not even get most of them to say the word ‘condom.’

As Favorite addressed a group of black pastors from around his state, he went where angels fear to tread, telling them that they had all taken the naive view that:

“It’s not here, not in our churches.”  But, “Then we found members of our congregations dying.  We didn’t even want to shake their hands.“

So what did Favorite propose?

“How do we bring into our teaching the use of condoms?  We believe abstinence is the answer, but there are those who will not listen.  We have to tell them that the least they can do is use a condom.”

The response from these erstwhile gentlemen?

Silence was the stern reply.

But why, when they know that in their pews every Sunday sit parishioners, young and old, suffering from HIV/AIDs, are these men so reluctant to follow Favorite’s example of speaking plainly to his flock, quite literally to save their lives?  Because they believe that the Bible says it all.  Don’t do it unless you are married!

But Favorite is doing his best to teach his fellow preachers that the message is not getting through and that they are not serving their God as he would intend until they did everything they could to help make African Americans healthy again.

Hopefully Barack Obama will show the same courage when it comes to sex education, not just for blacks, but for all Americans, instead of following in other American presidents’ painful footsteps: when AIDS reached America’s shores, Ronald Reagan did everything he could to prevent the message of prevention from reaching Americans.  Both Presidents Bush have pathetic records in that regard.

But, given the sad state of black health in that country, along with the connections the new president holds with the center of the AIDS epidemic – Africa – we can only suppose that Obama is a big fan of condoms and his policies will reflect that “fact.”

Picture credits ajbeanster

Because every member matters, because every voice helps, because every click spreads awareness and helps to help Africa a bit. Condomunity.com and Troy Kennedy, a social enterpreneur and co-founder of thedebateclub, want to make helping as easy as joining this facebook group. And this is what your support will trigger:

44 million servings of Coca-Cola products are sold across Africa – a day. This equates to 16 billion bottles a year. SO how about distributing condoms on a massive scale in Africa by asking Coca-Cola to team up with the United Nations Population Fund and a condom company and ask them to supply a condom with each bottle?Pretty impressive hm? You’ve got to know that donor support for condoms in developing countries remain stagnant at this time and far below projected need. So every donor, every help, every awareness this problem gets is needed. Don’t think your vote doesn’t count, no the support of people like you made Troy’s campaign extremely popular on UK’s Channel 4 Battlefront website.

Africa’s HIV Situation

Due to the difficulty in treating HIV/AIDS, preventing infection is a key aim in controlling the epidemic, with health organizations promoting safe sex in attempts to slow the spread of the virus.

At the recent International AIDS Conference in Mexico City one thing was made clear: measures need to be taken with condoms playing a key role in comprehensive HIV prevention, but donor support for condoms in developing countries remain stagnant and far below projected need. In 2007 33.2 million people lived with the disease, it claimed 2.1 million lives in the same year. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The poorest African countries rely almost entirely on donations of condoms from outside agencies such as the United Nations Population Fund. The UNFPA estimates that in 2005 at least 13.1 billion condoms were needed to significantly reduce the spread of HIV and another 4.4 billion were required for family planning. The number of condoms donated in 2005 was 1.8 billion – representing just 10% of the need.

Coke Campaign Goals

We primarily aim to persuade the Coca-Cola Company to take a good look at the unique position they have and utilising their unique distribution network to deliver important medicines and protective equipment like condoms to the millions of people that desperately need them. But actually we would like to encourage everyone to help too. Do you know a company that would like to sponsor condoms or has got similar means to help out? Would you like to write a blog post about this? Have you got any other suggestions to take action? Be our guests, comment after the article, get in touch with us or do something yourself.

New Series on Condomunity

This is also the start of a new series on condomunity. Troy Kennedy will regularly post updates on how things evolve, how successful his campaigning is and what this means to him. All updates can be read on here or in a more convenient way in your feed reader of course.

Further Reading

If you want to inform yourself on the topic outside of our campaign we suggest give these organisations a visit: UNFPA, UNAIDS, Population Action International, BBC World Service Trust and PSI. You might also want to have a look at the press release concerning this article and an older post regarding the topic:

• Date: 9.9.2008 Two University Students to Take on HIV in Africa
• Date: 14.7.2008 Could Coke Fight HIV in Africa?

So, join the Coke and Condoms facebook group, vote for Troy’s Battlefront campaign if you want to see him on tv and do some good. Please feel free to contribute and comment below!