Miami Herald - February 8, 2008
Begone Cazalis, bcazalis@MiamiHerald.com

Dwight Jackson, funeral director of Richardson Mortuary, read out loud the obituary of a 16-year-old boy, affectionately called "Little Dog," who had been popular, strong, athletic and smart.

"Little Dog" died of AIDS one day.

"He represents all the young people I see dead every year in my business because of HIV," said Jackson, who identified the boy as Herbert Andan Bruen.

The funeral director was speaking to members of the 5000 Role Model Excellence Project Thursday in an observance of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

'Just as it took 'Little Dog,' it can take you. Young men, let me tell you that abstinence and safe sex is what you should do," Jackson told the gathering of about 200 young male students at the Hialeah-Miami Lakes High School auditorium. "Be very careful with how you walk, because AIDS is spreading and it takes the young, as well as the old, in case you didn't know."

Later in the program the young men, led by Circuit Court Judge Darrin Gales, took the 5000 Role Models pledge that, among things, commits them to "abstain from irresponsible sexual conduct."

National Black HIV /AIDS Awareness Day was started in 2001 by the Community Capacity Building Coalition, an affiliate of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to increase participation and support for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment among African Americans.

Minority populations such as blacks and Hispanics are affected most by the disease, said Edgar Resto, a health educator with the South Florida AIDS Network for 17 years who spoke to the students on Thursday.

"Opa-locka has one of the highest levels of AIDS in Dade County and these minorities are the ones living there," Resto said in an interview. "The people who need to be educated the most are not getting the message, and that is why they are suffering."

One problem, Resto said, is lack of educational materials in Creole and Spanish; another is lack of education in schools about sexually transmitted diseases because it is not on the curriculum.

"Some schools won't even allow me to show an infected penis on a screen -- and it is important that they see it, not only because the students get a vivid picture of what could happen to them if they are not responsible but also because they learn how to recognize the disease and act fast to treat it and not spread it," Resto said.

According to the Miami-Dade Department of Health, even though blacks make up 20 percent of the county's population, they accounted for 58 percent of the AIDS cases in 2007. The case rates among black women are higher than among black men. Black women have a rate of AIDS that is 20 times higher than that for white women, and 80 percent of the children under 14 who have HIV/AIDS are black.

Although HIV/AIDS cases have significantly dropped among blacks from 1999 through 2007, the rates are still four times higher than among whites and Hispanics.

"A lot of people in school are having sex and stuff and I think this talk really enlightened us in a lot of issues, like how exactly diseases get transmitted and how many diseases are out there. Plus, just seeing that coffin was shocking," said Jeffrey Wright, 15, a Hialeah-Miami Lakes High sophomore and who joined the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project two years ago.

Becoming a member of the project changed his life, Jeffrey said. "Instead of skipping class and doing nothing, you want to act right because we are role models and want to maintain it that way."

The project, which was founded and is directed by state Sen. Frederica Wilson in 1993 while she was a member of the Miami Dade-County School Board, intervenes in the lives of at-risks boys, providing them with alternatives to crime and violence.

The program serves more than 6,000 students in 101 county schools. American and Norland high schools and Parkway Middle School also participated in the event HIV/AIDS awareness event Thursday.

"This activity definitely made an impact on them; just seeing that casket was a big shock," said Gregory Bellamy, a member of the 5000 Role Models activities committee. "These are the kinds of activities that we do that help them redirect their energy; it is an outlet. Instead of doing bad things, they are learning great ones."

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