Leadership and prevention of AIDS

“Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.” – Jessey Louis Jackson

There are generally two kinds of people in this world. Most are the people who look at others person to become leaders and follow them and a few who are leaders. Then there is a rare breed of the people who find leader in oneself to lead self. This world stage is a blend of all three breeds to fight against odd, to challenge the status quo, predominance or preponderance. The world had seen many Hitlers, many 9/11s events and world can surely fight AIDS as well. And what was common in a successful fight against these was the spirit to fight back and a vision that everybody followed demonstrated by thoughtful leadership within an individual, community, nation or world as a whole.

Visionary and thoughtful leadership to fight the AIDS will, not only channelise our efforts in a direction to achieve a bigger goal but also make us accountable for steps we take. Small organizations working on different aspects of AIDS such as preventive or curative, will not lead us to any where. We need to fight AIDS as one combined big unit by complementing each organizations work by our actions by following the bigger picture approach. This is the kind of leadership that infuses enthusiasm, provide resource planning and encourage activist. This leadership is very important to set the right tone to the whole initiative. The people who help them are none other then the huge crowd of followers. They are always the most important part in any battle, revolt or revolution. They are the actual implementers of any vision at the grass root level.

The second or atypical breed of leaders mentioned are the people who are enough self-motivated to fight against AIDS at personal level. They are the people who sometimes work as silent follower and sometimes as a silent leader. They lead themselves by example and follow the leader within themselves. The level of self awareness is complemented by the will to fight AIDS. They also work with the people close to them in this fight.

Each and every person is important in fight against AIDS. He may be a person who is fighting in community to prevent it or a person who is suffering from it. AIDS spread from an infected person. Unawareness among lower strata of society about them being infected by AIDS makes the cause more difficult. To start with, visionary and thoughtful Leadership will be important to create such an environment where people discuss about AIDS and the people suffering from it can come out openly in society and help us not to spread it. But this leadership should be able to develop more and more people who fall in the rare breed of leaders. One leadership should be able to create many leaders to lead themselves.

To sustain the fight, this initiative should make the most uncommon breed the most common one.