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Diagnosed positive at 19-years old, George Hankers felt he was "blinded from hope." But not anymore...
George Hankers found out he was HIV-positive at 19-years old. Now at 22, he’s embarking with the London and New York City-based advocacy group Shape History on a video experiment he hopes will give insight about people living with HIV across the globe.
In the video, Hankers stood in London’s Trafalgar Square while wearing a blindfold to represent the countless amount of HIV-positive people he feels are “blinded from hope.”
Hankers held a white board for people passing by to write positive messages. Once he took the blindfold off and was able to read them, he was quite taken aback: “You are me and I am you,” one person wrote.
Hankers, who founded the blog “Still Human,” said in a press release: “When I was diagnosed with HIV, I battled with very low self esteem, and I’d been blinded from hope. The sense of unity I had after the experiment was very heartwarming... It really goes to show that there is more comfort out there for people living with HIV than we initially think.”
Shape History’s Alex Thompson-Armstrong also chimed in about the project, telling Huffington Post, “The mission was to see if the general public would be sympathetic toward someone with HIV or whether there would be a lot of questions and debate around the issue.”
Watch the video here:
