Many young people look for secure, well-paying jobs, but five years ago when he was 21, Bu Jiaqing resigned from his very secure civil service job to become a full-time volunteer social worker, helping disadvantaged people.

At the same year, when a close friend was diagnosed HIV-positive, Bu helped him get medical care and gave him comfort and support. That’s when he decided to focus his volunteer efforts on gay men, or the community of men who have sex with men (MSM).

“That was the first time I realized that HIV-AIDS could be so close, that it really can happen to people around us, not the mysterious invisible people,” Bu told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview. “I hoped I could do something for them.”

Bu, who always wanted to be a social worker helping others, compares himself to a torch, a “human flashlight” shining light into dark corners where many people prefer not to look.

His big illumination with his friend came in 2008 and now at age 26, Bu runs his own volunteer organization, the Shanghai Youth Service Center for AIDS Prevention, which is established in the first place with help from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. And his group was registered with the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau in 2010.

It’s China’s first and only registered NGO in HIV-AIDS prevention working in the MSM community, according to Bu.

The center has five full-time workers, including Bu, and 40 volunteers who are university students and people helped by the organization.

Bu had a civil service job and was volunteering with the Shanghai Sunshine Community Youth Affairs Center, an NGO.

He resigned to work full-time on HIV-AIDs with various youth projects, but he didn’t tell his parents until 2011 when the NGO was official and up and running. His parents were not opposed but didn’t know what to tell relatives their son did for a living.

 “I always wanted to be one of the generous people offering selfless help to the disadvantaged,” he said.

At first his programs were limited to passing out condoms among the MSM group but work has expanded to providing medical information, counseling and social support. It encourages and organizes regular HIV checks, delivers lectures on safe sex and other issues and works on public education to reduce discrimination against HIV-positive people and AIDS patients.

Bu recalls the case of a 19-year-old youth who was diagnosed HIV-positive and was literally banished from the family home because parents felt ashamed of his disease. “They said they would rather he had leukemia,” Bu recalled.

His group provided counseling, comfort and mediation that finally reunited the family.

He and others also counsel HIV-positive men who are concerned about whether to tell their wives, whether they can continue to have sex with their wives and what the diagnosis means for sexual performance.

Encouraging monthly HIV-testing among gay men has been a major focus. In 2008 when the group was established, only 100 gay men went for testing organized by Bu’s group. So far this year, around 4,000 men have been tested. Over five years it has helped and arranged testing for 12,000 to 13,000 people.

According to his group’s database, the rate of infection is around 4.8 percent and has remained at that level for several years, indicating a several problem among gay men.

Gay and bisexual men account for around one in every three new cases of HIV in China, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health in 2011. Around 5 percent of the group —  officially termed men who have sex with men, or MSM —  are living with the virus, a rate 88 times higher than the national HIV prevalence of 0.057 percent.

Failing to practice safe sex is the major reason for the high infection rate among gay men, Bu said.

“Many gay people still consider AIDS a far-away disease that won’t happen to them. And since they don’t have to worry about getting pregnant, the idea of safe sex is not that popular,” Bu said. Most of the gay people in his database occasionally practice safe sex, “but intermittent safe sex is not safe at all,” he observed.

Various AIDS awareness and prevention programs have been undertaken in China without great success, Bu said, adding “it may be time for a new education approach.”

He was intrigued by an anti-smoking trial campaign by a Hong Kong NGO. The disgusting pictures on cigarette packs of diseased lungs were replaced by pictures of a beautiful woman next to a sallow, wrinkled female smoker. Other side-by-side photos showed a straight cigarette and a bent one, suggesting that smokers lose their erections. The NGO said the smoking rate dropped during the period when comparison photos were used.

“What’s the best way to really impact and motivate the target population? That’s a question many AIDS prevention educators have neglected or failed to figure out,” Bu said. “Of course, the medical arguments are true but it’s not clear that they are absorbed and help change behavior.”

Sharing information rather than lecturing and admonishing is the major approach of the Shanghai Youth Service Center for AIDS Prevention in its education programs.

Interesting fable-like stories about virtual characters like Miss Toothpick (a fictional character) are used to convey the idea that it’s not practical to be celibate but it’s not good to practice unprotected sex.

“Because of privacy issues, many people, especially gay men, are reluctant to reveal their AIDS-related concerns to volunteers that they hardly know. But the stories of a third person can resonate, so they feel freer to raise questions,” Bu said.

In addition to lectures, Bu and his team use social networks to reach a larger population, while protecting their privacy. It uses a 24-hour hotline, a QQ group with more than 10,000 members, and a pilot WeChat platform with 1,000 members. The platform answers questions, provides information and releases notices on HIV testing dates.

The most common questions concern symptoms, whether and where to get tested, and how long can an HIV-positive person live.

“That shows their trust in us, but it also reveals how limited their HIV-AIDS knowledge is and how little they know about where to get answers and help,” Bu said.

Discrimination against HIV-AIDS patients drives high-risk groups to reject channels of help that are associated with AIDS.

Eliminating discrimination is even more challenging than HIV testing and prevention, said Bu.

In 2010, Bu’s group launched “A Smile Collection” program around Jing’an Temple, as part of a national trial effort to reduce fear of HIV-AIDS patients. It involved stopping people on the street and asking to take their photos with statements on befriending HIV-positive people.

In the national program, 10,000 people in 10 cities had their smiling pictures taken, with slogans such as “I want to work with HIV-positive people” and “I want to be friends with HIV-positive people.”

At first Bu worried that passersby would rebuff his efforts. “But I was surprised that only around 5 percent refused to have their picture taken,” he said. Many parents encouraged their children to take part.

“It is an encouraging result, but we shouldn’t be too optimistic about ending discrimination, since accepting a slogan is much easier than accepting a real AIDS patient,” Bu said.

“It’s understandable that most government policies serve the majority and mainstream, and some non-mainstream areas are not served,” Bu said. “It’s the NGO’s job to speak for the non-mainstream and fight for their rights. There’s still much we can do.”

Today a stage play will be performed about an AIDS orphan growing up in a hospital. It presents a realistic picture of AIDS patients who are ordinary people. Based on a true story, it is coproduced by the Shanghai Youth Service Center for AIDS Prevention and the Shanghai Theater Academy.

Drama “Unit No 11”

Date: Today, 7:15pm

Tickets: 80-580 yuan

Tel: 962-388

Venue: Malanhua Theater

Address: 643 Huashan Rd

Shanghai Youth Service Center for AIDS Prevention

Website: http://www.scyc.org.cn/Index.html

Tel: 400-691-0694

QQ: 400-691-0694