Meheret Melles is a 20 year old Ethiopian-American student at the University of Maryland. She is on the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth and a member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign.

Attention! Attention! The International AIDS Conference of 2006 has finally begun! With warning from my fellow colleagues that endured three hours of waiting to register for the Conference, I decided to wake up early to make the registration process as brief as possible. With only 20 minutes spent for registration, I enjoyed the rest of the day exploring the Youth Pavillion, which included lounges for chill-out sessions and booths for organizations to offer information on youth-led international HIV prevention work.

The highlight of the day was surely the Opening Session of the Main Conference. Political leaders like the President of Liberia, Mrs. Ellen Johnson, the UNAIDS Director of HIV/AIDS, Peter Piot, and a globally-known couple with a fair amount of money--Bill and Melinda Gates. Even with all these "famous" speakers, the highlight of my day was the spontaneous demonstration organized by a US-based coalition of advocacy organizations, including my personal favorite the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC), to fully fund the Fund for Health Care Workers (HCW) in the fight against HIV/AIDS. After a powerful HIV-positive, 24-year old Indonesian woman spoke about several issues such as the battle of stigma among people living with HIV, thousands stood up in grand applause. Moments after, members of the coalition of US-based activists stood up with "invisible doctors and nurses" or what was actually medical coats hung on poles. The activist coalition loudly chanted "Countries need to pay, doctors want to stay! Open up your purses, we need more nurses!"

As an activist with the Student Global AIDS Campaign, I admired the strategy to focus attention on pushing funds to keep Health Care Workers on the ground, so that they actually have the capacity to sustain facilities and services in developing countries.

For the remainder of the week, I look forward to speaking up as a young person in sessions and in the daily Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention Newsletter about important issues like maintaining health care workers.

Meheret Melles is a 20 year old Ethiopian-American student at the University of Maryland. She is on the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth and a member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign.

After a day full of chasing dreams, youth gathered together for a night of theatre, live music, and art. As a volunteer, I had the pleasure to set up Chasing the Dream, an art exhibit of stunning photos, taken by youth in developing countries. These talented youth photographers were trained and released to venture around their community to capture the true essence of fear and excitement that their people candidly expressed. The rest of the night allowed Pre-Conference participants to mingle and enjoy the catered gourmet hors d'oeuvres.

To my surprise, Laurie Garrett (also known as my idol), a phenomenally known journalist and Pulitzer Prize Winner in reproductive and sexual health, spoke with passionate words, particularly on the marginalization of women and girls in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Ms. Garrett emphasized how in a country like Sweden, the chance of a woman to die during a pregnancy was 1/28,000; at the same time, a mother in a developing country can be at risk of death by as high as 1/6. Ms. Garrett ardently proclaimed that, "You may call this a difference, but I call it an injustice."

Soon after, the Positive Voice Theatre Troupe, a community-based non-profit organization led by and for women living with HIV/AIDS in Ontario, pleasured us with a performance from their project, Voices of Positive Women. The performance touched briefly on many different issues that HIV positive women face. My most memorable part was the last scene of the skit, where the women gathered together to portray a demonstration for the rights of sex workers, by chanting "Workers Unite!" The climax of the evening was when the audience soon caught on to the energy of the performers, and started chanting along with them. The momentum I carried was the feeling that this wasn't a performance anymore and we were truly ready to take on the challenges of our time, such as the marginalization of women.

Of course, the night was just beginning. With all the enthusiasm from the celebration of youth accomplishments in HIV/AIDS prevention work, how could it possibly be over? Well, to everyone's surprise (except my own), 4 guys hopped on the stage and started jamming to the heavy sounds of indie rock n' roll, allowing us to figure out that they were actually the growing popular Canadian band, The Stills! (It wasn't a mystery to me only because I had a preview of their performance during their rehearsal as an assistant setting up the show.) Personally, I thought it was amazing to see youth from all over the world experience their first Western live musical performance. I didn't see one person who wasn't dancing!

When I talked to The Stills' pianist, Liam, he said, "I've never seen an audience line dance before!" I, myself, agreed that I've been to a lot of concerts, but have never seen a circle of West Africans join arms and dance around to Canadian rock. This night truly set the benchmark for a week full of surprises that will bring a lot of excitement to the Main Conference.