STOCKHOLM. It may not be the first venue that comes to mind, but Café Opera it is, the venue for a major AIDS-charity in Stockholm on 5 December.
The list of participating artists indicates that the general perception about HIV-AIDS has become a major issue in Sweden, it reads like a who´s who among Swedish pop- and rock music: Mats Ronander, Mauro Scocco, Plura, Louise Hoffsten, Nationalteatern and Sanne Salomonsen (Danish).
Incidentally many of these also participated at the Swedish Rock Against Apartheid concerts back in 1985.
The income from the event, on the World Aids Day, will go to The Chiparamba Foundation, a foundation dedicated to use African football players as AIDS-informers.
The Chiparamba Foundation is the brainchild of Klas Björkhagen, a Swede who has been taken in by the way HIV-AIDS has become the killer disease in Zambia. And how it affects the Chiparamba soccer team, who´s youth have won the Gothia Cup, the World´s largest youth soccer tournament, held in Sweden annually, and it’s surrounding.
Klas Björkhagen visited Zamibia a number of times last year. This is how the idea came up to use football players as informers.
“Young kids and youth in the squatter areas would not listen to a nurses, but the soccer stars are their heroes and when they talk about the importance of protecting oneself during sex the message hits home”, said Klas Björkhagen in an interview with Dagens Industri, the Stockholm business newspaper.
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