Fridae

The Phuket Loves You Club, the organisers of Phuket Pride for the past 4 years has managed to raise over 900,000 Baht over the last four years.The money was raised through the support of the local community and tourists, either attending or sponsoring events.

The money raised will allow PLU to continue with their programs to fight HIV in Phuket.

The proceeds from this year’s Pride celebrations, after retaining some funds for future events, will be distributed to the Life Home Project foundation, where the PLU assists in the funding of the education of children with HIV or with parents with HIV, and the PLU Community projects which aim to increase the awareness of HIV and safe sex.

The main programme within the Community projects is HARP – HIV and Aids Related Programme which, over the past year, has provided for 475 free HIV tests for the community in Soi Paradise and has seen a large scale reduction in positive tests.

This together with a poster campaign in Thai, promoting safe sex and the importance of HIV testing, 25 free condom boxes in all the gay venues in Soi Paradise and issuing over 70,000 free condoms, of which 50,000 of these condoms and lubrication packs were supplied free to the PLU from Karex Burhad and 20,000 from the Sabaidee Clinic.

Ian Phillips the PLU Chairman said “I would like to thank everyone who has supported our last four Phuket Pride weeks. With less people coming to Phuket this year, to achieve this figure is a great achievement and I would like to thank all those who worked tirelessly to organise the week’s events, those who attended and donated and to all of our highly valued sponsors, including Karex Burhad, without whom none of what we are now delivering to our community would be possible”.

The Chairman of the PLU Community project Team, Ken Miller, said “I am delighted that we have managed to raise this amount of money which will allow us to continue the work we have already started.  Our goal this year is to expand our outreach to the Community in Paradise Soi by collaborating with another community donor to provide funding to support Sabaidee Clinic in offering free CD4 testing for people who have tested positive. We feel that by partnering with Patong Hospital, Sabaidee Clinic, and Phuket’s Health Department, we will reach our goal of reducing the rate of HIV to Zero in our local LGBT community.  Until we reach that goal, we will continue to work towards the goal of assuring that all of our local LGBT community who are positive are able to use the Thai Health System to live a normal and healthy life.“

This year Phuket Pride took place in April, but the organization hosts a number of events throughout the year.