To all WAIT friends and family:

April is already almost over -- less than 4 months into this year, we have accomplished a lot. It is our hope again that this newsletter serves those who have invested so much into the battle of stopping AIDS. A big thank you goes to you all.

Washington AIDS International Teens

WAIT teaches people of all ages, races, religions, and cultures about the science of HIV. We advocate getting tested, living abstinent until a lifetime partnership, and good health care for those infected. We teach through the performing arts and other talents and skills, including electronic media and communication. WAIT works with anyone wishing to stop to AIDS in their communities and across the globe.

From Upstate New York:

Five cities visited on Upstate New York trip

by Kate Tsubata and Christella Hardman

After the WAIT team’s Great Lakes Tour (late November, early December), in which the One Year Trainers traveled and performed around eight states and Canada, the team was asked to return to upstate New York to teach HIV/AIDS prevention, spread the WAIT message more, and help start a WAIT team there.  City after city, from schools to Boys and Girls Clubs to churches, it became more and more apparent to the team that, not only does New York need better education, more role models, values, and encouragement of individuals to develop their unique talents to be pushed in the educational and community institutions – but the cities that we visited also has clear potential to do so.

Read the full story...

News from the State Teams

New Jersey WAIT Holds Workshop with Abstinence Program
by Eun Hwa Mouada

On Saturday April 14th, the New Jersey chapter of the WAIT team was invited, once again, to have a small WAIT workshop with 7th graders from all across the state of New Jersey that are in the One Heart (“Il Shim”) abstinence program.
These kids were a tough crowd to please. We started off with a small performance to show them what we do externally with the skit, One Girl Revolution, Hero and the final act, with testimonies of why we chose to be abstinent in between each act. The audience received everything pretty well, especially the testimonies.
Following the performance, we split everyone into 4 groups (one for each break-out session). Due to  some difficulties organizing everyone efficiently, our time was very limited with only 15 minutes per session. But the NJ WAIT team worked hard to train everyone, and we were able to get our message across loud and strong through dance, break dancing, singing and drama.
After we concluded, a few audience members asked if they could come up and tell the crowd why they were abstinent. Everyone could tell that what they were saying was truly genuine; there were no filters between their heart and their mouth.
Overall, we can conclude that this mini-workshop was a success. The participants really feel that WAIT is a great way to inspire their peers that living the way an abstinent lifestyle is the right way to go!

DC Performs for the Words To Life Ministry Church
by Rakim Muhammad

On Sunday April 22nd, the DC WAIT team went to the Words To Life Ministry Church in Owings Mills, MD to perform for the church there. We were invited to the church through friends of Uncle Gregg Jones. When we arrived we were warmly welcomed into their church. Soon after we arrived, the church service started.

The service started with a prayer and a few songs. The members of the church we SUPER highly energetic and were dancing and singing with all their energy and their heart. Then the youth choir of the church came up and sung a song. They sounded really good. After a few songs and bible readings, Uncle Gregg was introduced.

Uncle Gregg went up and introduced WAIT to the members of the church. He gave a really awesome inspiring introduction which got us all pumped up to perform. After he was done, Lan Tsubata and Rakim Muhammad introduced WAIT more and the first act which was breakdancing. The breakdance act was to a James Brown remix song. It went pretty well and the audience was really excited after the breaking. Next, we went into the skit narrated by Lan and acted out by everyone else. The skit was also well received and the audience learned alot from it. After the skit was a song called "Wait For Me", an original WAIT team song. That song had the whole church clapping and even singing along at the end. Next was the gameshow. The audience knew almost all of the answers, but, with some divine intervention (Lan giving out some answers), the audience got all of the answers correct. After the gameshow, Hashim Muhammad introduced our next song called "Hero", originally written by Superchick by and rewritten by WAIT to fit our message more. They convienently had all the amps we needed and a drumset so the song sounded really good. After "Hero" was a dance to "One Girl Revolution" a song also created by Superchick but the dance was made by WAIT members. The audience or at least all the girls in the audience enjoyed that dance, but afterwards Wonma Agbaza explained that guys could start a revolution too so it was all good after that. Wonma introduced our final act, "Can't Hurry Love" by The Supremes. It is one of the best WAIT acts which involves the WAIT mebers and the audience dancing together. The church enjoyed the whole performance and some people even gave donations to WAIT. Afterwards all of the church members and pastors thanked us for coming and wanted us to come back some time to train them and start a WAIT team in Baltimore.

So after the performance we talked to people and learned that they all loved us and loved what we were standing up for and what WAIT was doing all over the world. So, after we said bye to everyone (and grabbing a few sodas) we went home.

Share your heart! Contact us on what you think!

E-mail: info@waitteam.org

Phone: (301) 577-1094

Address: 7752 Decatur Rd., Hyattsville, MD 20784