A stall is one of the best ways to tell more people about your campaign and that AIDS is POLITICAL, collect lots of video messages and get lots of action cards signed.
1. Plan your stall in advance to make it as effective as possible.
- Do you need to book a space or get permission?
- Who is going to run the stall?
- Will you run it for an hour at lunchtimes, or will you run it over a whole day, or week.
- Organise a rota of people to help out and make sure there are two or three people on at any one time. This way you can help each other, it’s more fun, and you are covered if someone is late or forgets to turn up.
Staying in touch
Don’t forget to collect the details (i.e. email addresses) of people who want to stay in touch with what you are doing or get involved in the campaign. A good of way of encouraging people to get involved is to plan a campaign event for the future — then you can tell people there is something specific coming up that they could help with. You could also advertise you next meeting.
2. Make your stall eye-catching
An eye-catching stall will lure in passers by making it easier for you to engage with them. You could have a red theme, use pill bottles to collect action cards and decoate the surrounding area using your ‘AIDS is POLITICAL’ stencil. You could use stenciled material as a back-drop or table cloth, wear stenciled T.shirts and put up stenciled posters.
Sheffield P&P group take action on World AIDS Day 2005
Message in a bottle…
Make a free-standing pill bottle, as large as you can manage, with a slot in the top for people to post their cards into, and a clear front so that you can see how many you’ve got. Cut the pill bottle shape out of a big piece of cardboard (the massive boxes from outside bike and computer shops are particularly good for this). * Cut a square out of the front, where the label would normally go, and cover it with a sheet of clear or tinted plastic - such as a transparent OHP sheet - so you can see inside. * Paint it to look like a pill bottle, and make sure you label it ‘AIDS drugs’ or ‘AIDS Treatment’. * Stick a cardboard box to the back of your pill shape, so that it stands up on its own, and has space inside to collect cards. * Make sure the box is underneath the slot so that people can drop their cards in from the front of the bottle.
Homemade pill bottle mark two.
left]
Homemade pill bottle.
Homemade pill bottle.
The pill bottle on the left was made by reusing an old five litre water bottle. The lid was made from an empty (Fairtrade!) coffee tub, wrapped in corrugated cardboard and painted.
You could leave your bottle in a prominent place for a week or even a month, and hold regular stalls encouraging people to sign an action card. Then everyone who walks past will see it gradually fill up with cards.
In 2005 world leaders promised that everyone who needs life-saving AIDS treatment should be able to access it. But millions of people are dying because the medicines they need are priced out of reach. We’re asking the UK government to make sure the world keeps its promise.
DIRECTIONS FOR USE:
- Ensure that AIDS treatment remains at the top of the UK and the international agenda
- Achieve the target of treatment for all by 2010
- Support the manufacture and supply of generic AIDS drugs in developing countries, as this is the cheapest and most efficient longterm solution
- Provide substantial and sustainable financing for AIDS treatment as even the cheapest drugs are too expensive for poor people and poor countries to afford
TO BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY
DO NOT KEEP OUT OF REACH
Don’t forget to make it clear what the campaign is about.
3. Making your stall look like a pharmacy
The Phoney Pharmacy (which toured universities in 2005) attracted lots of interest by blaring out a soundtrack that included `Bad Medicine’ and ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’.
Decorate your stall to make it look like a pharmacy counter. Your group members can stand behind it - dressed as doctors or pharmacists - ‘prescribing’ cards.
- First, make a big banner out of card to run across the top of your stall, saying ‘pharmacy.’ Make sure you’ve got a large table, and maybe a board at each end so the pharmacy is enclosed and you really look like you are serving customers over the counter.
- Paint a background of pill bottles and boxes, perhaps with statistics about the AIDS crisis on them.
- Dressing up as doctors/pharmacists: Find some white coats. You could borrow labcoats from any of your friends who do chemistry, biology, medicine etc, and make model stethoscopes or a thermometer.
- Getting the message across: Make sure your stall gets the Treat AIDS Now campaign message across from a long way away. We suggest having a large board on either side of your stall with a striking message painted on.
- Getting cards signed: The doctors can ‘prescribe’ cards to everyone who approaches the stall. Ask them to sign a card and put in the pill-bottle. You could buy some pill-like sweets to reward their efforts.
Do take lots of photos and keep us in touch with what you’re doing, as this campaign is all about group action creating a national (then international!) impact. Email us