Can you share some of your background about growing up? Ramirez: I grew up in a children’s home since 2002, since I was two years old. At that time, my father told me that my mom died because she had AIDS. In that time, he was in a bad way of life, so he told me he couldn’t be helping me at that time. He just gave me to this woman, who was starting a children’s home. It was a really nice experience because they were teaching me in different ways, and they were like my family. They never told us that HIV was something horrible or that was something to be afraid of. They were always trying to teach us: how can you live in this situation? They prepared us to teach other people about this sickness. I learned all the names of every medication to provide to each child. At that time, I was really empowered and I was really informed about this situation, and at that time I didn’t know more family, I just knew my father. But then we always had the opportunity to visit our family, if we had family. I was really happy to find them, so I went there for three weeks—and it was a horrible experience at that time.They were behaving in a really bad way. I couldn’t even use a cup. They would not let me. But then, I think that horrible experience, it is something that has helped me a lot to grow. I realized that, in the children’s home, they empowered us in different ways. Based on that experience, what do you think can be done to address stigma? Ramirez: I feel we need more support for leaders, for politicians. They feel that that is a really bad sickness, that if you have HIV, you have AIDS, so you will die. We need more support. We need more people to talk about this topic. We need people taking these topics seriously because now the status is really high, so now we can just take one pill one time a day. We have been seeing improvement. I know stigma is something that we can prevent because there are many ways to prevent it. What do you think churches can do to create safe spaces for young people living with HIV? Ramirez: I feel that churches have a closed mind. They are thinking other topics are more important. They are not thinking about this person with HIV. Maybe if they tell someone, someone in their church, and the church doesn’t have the knowledge, they can behave in a bad way because they don’t have information. We need to tell leaders and churches to educate more. They need to find ways to educate while they are preaching. If you could say one thing to church leaders, what would be your message? Ramirez: That they are not thinking about the life of the person, about what is the background of that person. We need to be focused on how to be involved, how can we engage with that person. But they don’t know because they don’t ask them. They aren’t close to that person. Church leaders should say: “You can count on me. I can help you.” Any last message you would like to share with the world? Ramirez: Now I’m here to empower other people. We have many different ways, how we can empower ourselves and how we can help other people. How can I be myself? Now we have different ways to have our own family without transmitting HIV to our child so that is something to give you an opportunity to believe in yourself. Try to be yourself. I have been trying to be more open, to help other people. I was afraid. But then you can find the right people. You can say, “This is my friend.”But we need to have more information and be more empowered. Most of all, try to be yourself. | 
On January 20th, the United States saw a return to the peaceful transition of power as Donald Trump succeeded Joe Biden as the 47th Presiden...
