Miami Herald - February 26, 2005
Mamie Ward, mward@herald.com

It wasn't a pep rally for an athletics event that had more than 200 students staying after school to fill up the auditorium at Miami Central High School Wednesday with spirited chants and yells. It was something more serious: a need to keep their peers alive.

"People sometimes think that just because we are an urban school we don't care," said Trumanin Howard, 18, a peer educator at the school. "But we really do care."

With trumpets roaring and drums booming, the Miami Central marching band led the way, as students grabbed their signs, chanted, "Wrap it Up," loudly, marched on Northwest 95th Street and made it known just how much they cared about the deadly effects of HIV/AIDS.

Adreana Noel, 15, a student in the Army JROTC, said she decided to stay after school to join the march and rally because it sounded interesting.

The "We're No. 1" campaign, as it was termed, was organized by peer educators from the R.A.P (Rocket Awareness Program), a student organization dedicated to helping educate peers on the deadly disease taking hold in the neighborhood. The rally protested the absence of a full-service clinic in the school.

David Hession, a social studies teacher and sponsor of the R.A.P. program, said a clinic was necessary to give students and the community in general access to medical care they may not be able to receive otherwise.

"One of the reasons we need help is because the kids aren't getting things at home," said Hession. "A good portion of them don't have medical insurance. The only place they would really have access to medical service is here."

The clinic would provide services such as HIV/AIDS testing that schools are not allowed to do, he said.

The most recent Miami-Dade Health Department HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report in December said there are 27,976 cumulative cases of AIDS in the county, with 51 percent of the those involving African Americans and other blacks.

Armed with frightening statistics and the will to educate, students began planning a campaign to push for a health center in January, according to Rodney Pierre, a peer educator and member of the R.A.P. program. Pierre wrote to Miami Mayor Manny Diaz -- a strong advocate of AIDS/HIV awareness -- stressing the need for a clinic.

"We want everyone to hear our voices. We eventually want to move from ZIP Code to ZIP Code and increase awareness and try to bring down the AIDS rate," Pierre said.

For Shirleta Reid, who works with the University of Miami's Adolescent Medicine, Pierre's message was loud and clear. She graduated from Miami Central in 1989 and said there was never anything like this AIDS/HIV awareness drive when she was in high school.

"It was never talked about," said Reid. "This is a really good effort."

Reid, who now has a 17-year-old daughter, lost her mother to the HIV virus in 1984. Her father, who was also infected, is still living.

"We need parents and more of the community to get involved with this."

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