We at the HIV Prevention Lab had a fantastic night out at the HOPE Centre Launch party and hope to see most everyone again at the next event!

The HIV Prev Lab would also like to extend a tremendous thank you to all of our lab members who volunteered their time at this event!! Terri, Evan, Joshua, Christopher, Mario, and Jane: thank you all so much for all your help in ensuring this night’s success!

Dr. Julie James (on behalf of the HOPE Centre) would like to express these sentiments and information about the next HOPE event:

We at the HOPE Centre are deeply grateful for your attendance and/or interested in our event, our work, and vitally our goals for collaborative community work that is meaningful and important to community. We had a great time with you and this is just the start of this vision for our Centre!

In early Fall of 2023, we will be holding a community engagement symposium to delve deeper into the issues  and community strengths you identify. The goal of these on-going symposiums to set centre’s goals and research programs, strategize on how to move forward collaboratively, and to build research agendas, relationships, and outputs (program evaluations, public reports, building programs, creative projects, etc.) that are helpful to communities. We are also interested in building community capacity to do research by and for respective marginalized 2SLBGTQ+ communities.

The second event will be about three hours long, involve feasting, and paid work for those who are working outside of paid roles with their organizations.

So far, identified topic areas include – Black communities, trans communities, HIV-impacted individuals/populations, and newcomers (including the intersections in and between these communities/issues).

Here is the form for us to help identify key topic areas and interest in the second event. Please fill out as soon as you are able as we only have 30-40 spots for this event: https://forms.gle/kVfRcc9NMoMghRkB9

Once again, thank-you for your engagement – it was really lovely to meet and have fun with many of you!!!