Jul 16, 2004  |  By: LAUREL LUNDSTROM  | COMMENTS     

WHEN ORGANIZERS OF the 6th Annual White Attire Affair sit down for dinner Saturday, July 17, they will use napkins that encourage them to, “Be tested! Be treated! Be healthy! Be safe! Live!”

And as gay men and women socialize, wearing white attire that the event’s organizers say symbolizes the purity of life and living healthy, condoms designed for both genders will be tossed to them by members of a steel drum band.

“It is an unobtrusive in-your-face way to get the message out,” says Clyde H. Penn Jr., chair and chief executive officer of the Ummah Endowment Fund Inc., a philanthropic initiative created in Washington, D.C., to support HIV/AIDS causes geared toward people of color.

Event organizers adopted the affair’s theme from an African tradition known as Carnivále, a celebratory festival that also is popular in the West Indies and South America. Penn says such celebrations increasingly are being used in some African countries to promote HIV/AIDS education and awareness about healthy living.

In addition to distributing condoms at the White Attire Affair, which will be held in Northwest Washington at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, organizers also plan to distribute pamphlets about HIV/AIDS and provide on-site testing during the celebration. X-Faction, a dance troupe that finished second at last year’s International Hip-Hop Dance Championships, is scheduled to perform a piece that contains a message about HIV/AIDS.

PENN SAYS THERE is still a major void in “culturally relevant” and “linguistically competent” tools to get messages about HIV/AIDS to people of color. The White Attire Affair is one way to reach them.

In addition to providing information, organizers have developed a survey to gather information from participants about their race, gender, age, sexual behavior, as well as opinion and knowledge of HIV/AIDS and HIV testing.

“We are a forward-thinking organization putting a new face on the fight against AIDS,” says D. Todd Myrick, chair of the event and a board member at Whitman-Walker Clinic, the largest AIDS service organization in the region.

Penn says Ummah organizers also are reaching out to organizations such as Us Helping Us: People Into Living Inc., an HIV/AIDS organization in Washington created to help black gay and bisexual men, and the Women’s Collective, a group created to help women living with HIV/AIDS, regardless of sexual orientation.

Event organizers are scheduled to donate an amount to be announced that evening to Us Helping Us, which is involved in an ongoing fund-raising initiative tied to moving the organization’s headquarters from Capitol Hill to a larger facility in Northwest Washington.

Although Penn says Ummah is not a gay-specific organization, many of its supporters, volunteers and leaders are gay. He says the White Attire Affair is one of the only social outlets in D.C. where gay men and women of color have a chance to unite.

Six years ago, Abdur Rahim Briggs, a Muslim man who had a brother diagnosed with AIDS, created “Ummah,” which means “community” in Arabic. Penn says the White Attire Affair started as a120-person event, and that last year the crowd climbed to 1,500 patrons. This year, organizers expect 2,000 people to attend.

“We are allowing the community to galvanize to support HIV/AIDS [causes],” Myrick says, noting that the Ummah Endowment Fund has donated more than $240,000 to HIV/AIDS education and social marketing efforts aimed at 3,000 people.