Aids solidarity (Solidarité sida)

Nonprofit set up to fight AIDS (1992). Meeting at the Hôtel Marigny on the occasion of World AIDS Day (1 December 2009)

Solidarité Sida (AIDS Solidarity) was created in 1992 by Luc Barruet and Éric Elzière. Its honorary chairman, Antoine de Caunes, has helped raise the media profile of the nonprofit, which aims to make young people more aware of AIDS. Solidarité Sida uses cultural events as a springboard for raising funds, highlighting the work of non-profit organizations and organizing debates and forums around the disease. The first such event scheduled was La Nuit du Zapping, in 1996, in which documentaries about AIDS were aired alongside excerpts from television shows. The principle was replicated in 2001 with La Nuit de l’humour. But one of the most emblematic events organized by Solidarité Sida is the Soliday festival. In July 2009, the 11th such event welcomed some 200 French and international performers over a period of three days and generated more than 1.4 million euros donated to French nonprofits and local organizations in other countries. It allowed some 150,000 festival-goers to hear some great music at the Longchamp racecourse, but they also learned that six young people under 25 are infected with the virus every minute. For all those who didn’t already know this…