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Pride-In-A-Box: Prepare for Pride
Pre-Pride Activities (In-Person & Virtual Pride)
A Pride event in your community is a prime time to highlight your HIV work. Raising HIV awareness and tapping into conversations during your Pride event and throughout Pride month can be a key opportunity to further messaging in your local community. Whether this is your first Pride or you’ve had a presence at Pride events for years, it’s important to be prepared. This section includes tips and information that will help you get ready to attend your local Pride festival, gather the materials and resources you will need on the ground, and promote your organization’s attendance at Pride.
Set Yourself Up for Success
Decide what you want to focus on.
What is it that you hope to accomplish this Pride season? Do you want to increase HIV testing? Reduce HIV stigma? Encourage condom use? Promote more open communication between sexual partners? Encourage those with HIV to become undetectable? It is a good idea to figure out what you want to focus on before you even secure a booth so that you can be as effective as possible in gathering resources and deciding what activities to participate in.
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Promote & offer HIV Testing
If you want to promote testing and your organization doesn’t offer it, identify a local health department or community-based organization to offer HIV testing and try to get booth space next to them.
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Support people living with HIV
If you want to promote health to people with HIV, think about how you can provide information or partner with local healthcare providers to improve linkages and access to care services.
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Help stop HIV stigma
If you want to reduce stigma, consider partnering with people who can help educate about stigma reduction. Share educational materials at your booth about stigma reduction.
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Recruit volunteers to help
Once you’ve got a team in place, create a volunteer list and schedule that includes time slots and volunteers’ contact information.
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Coordinate on-site HIV testing
If your organization is equipped to offer testing, be sure your booth has enough room for a private location. If you don’t offer testing, see if your local health department or a community-based organization that offers HIV testing is attending Pride. Reach out to them to get their booth location so you can refer attendees to the testing locations. You may also consider asking the Pride coordinators for a booth space next to or near the testing organization to help attendees easily locate the testing location.
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Conduct pre-event promotion
Start digital and print promotion at least 2–3 weeks before the event to encourage a good turnout. If you have a limited budget, social media, flyers and posters, and local radio air time are good ways to get the word out about your Pride participation. If you have a larger budget, consider paid ads on social media, Google, or radio, as well as paid billboards, transit ads, or print ads in local newspapers or magazines.
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Prepare talking points & messages
Make sure everyone working at your booth is prepared with talking points and messages. Also, make sure your team is prepared to answer questions about HIV testing, prevention, and treatment options, and how to combat HIV stigma. Visit the Together website, CDC’s HIV Basics webpage, and the CDC’s HIV Risk Reduction Tool for the most current information and resources. You also want to have information about your organization and where to find local HIV prevention and treatment services.
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Make your team comfortable
Amenities such as water, snacks, chairs, and a Bluetooth speaker to play music can help your team members and booth visitors enjoy their day.
As you gather materials and resources for Pride event attendees, review the Together campaign materials an assets and select those that best align with your goals and your audiences. Download our suite of Pride Promotion Assets that includes printable posters, social media assets, and more. See the Appendix for detailed information about these assets.
In addition, Together has created materials that are tailored for LGBTQ audiences. You can download and print some of our more popular materials to share at Pride events. You can also order printed versions of most of these materials from CDC-INFO using the Publication (Pub) ID.
Remember to note the quantity of each of the materials you started with before the Pride event so you can determine how many were distributed.
PRIDE TIPS: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The Together campaign has many other resources covering testing, prevention, treatment, and stigma for a range of audiences. Visit cdc.gov/StopHIVTogether for our full suite of materials, including videos, which you might also want to share depending on your booth setup.
Right-click item to download:
PrEP Brochure (English) (Pub ID 222331)
PrEP Brochure (Spanish) (Pub ID 222330)
Stigma Language Guide (English) (Pub ID 300497)
Stigma Language Guide (Spanish) (Download Only)
Palm Cards for Gay and Bisexual Men (Pub IDs 300235, 300234, 300241, 300242, 300243)
Stigma Pledge Cards (Pub IDs 300883, 300879, 300882, 300877, 300880, 300881, 300878)
In addition to downloading or ordering Together materials, there may be opportunities to work with the Together campaign to co-brand materials with your logos or local contact information. Co-branding opportunities are available to health departments and other agencies and groups. For more information, email StopHIVTogether@cdc.gov.
The key is to create content that is relevant, appealing, and useful.
Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are tools to support your organization’s mission and engage with your priority audiences, especially during Pride season. In the weeks leading up to your community’s Pride activities, posting Pride-related content can help motivate your followers to join you as you celebrate Pride. This is also a strategic time to integrate Pride messages into your HIV-related content. See the Appendix for sample social media posts you can tailor to fit your needs and maximize your reach.
The Together campaign also has a variety of evergreen social media content in English and Spanish in our regularly updated Social Media toolkits. Using pre-created messages can help extend your presence and keep the conversation going with your followers after Pride season.
PRIDE TIPS: EXPANDING REACH
In addition to your own social media channels and hashtags, tagging others in your social media posts (i.e., attaching the name of a related organization or individual, and name/location of local Pride event) helps you extend your reach. We also encourage you to use the hashtag #StopHIVTogether and tag us at @StopHIVTogether to join our larger conversation.