Mita flies to Vienna!

This Summer Envision Grad Mita Desai took a 23 hour coach journey to Vienna to join government leaders, UN agencies and the scientific community at a conference aimed at tackling AIDS.

The International AIDS Conference 2010 took place from the 18th to the 23rd of July in Austria’s capital city Vienna and involved over 25,000 participants from more than 100 different countries. Participants included top scientists, government and UN representatives and members of the public who are passionate about addressing issues and finding solutions to end the current AIDS pandemic.

Mita, (who found out about the opportunity through the Envision Grad Opportunities page) was representing Restless Development, a youth led development agency, who promote activism and advocacy amongst young people. Whilst at the conference she took part in a training programme that skilled her up in being able to deliver presentations to students back in the UK to increase their awareness.  The conference also provided the opportunity for sufferers of the HIV virus, which currently affects more than 3.5 million people across the world, to engage in decision making that could potentially impact on them.

Mita said “It was an awesome opportunity to meet loads of interesting people from all walks of life, and join in a protest with thousands of other supporters to promote the human rights of those living with the virus.  We also got to go to an Annie Lenox support concert, which was pretty cool!”

If you’re interested in finding out more about opportunities such as this, check out the Grad Opportunities page or sign up for Grad Alerts.