With world music playing in the background and small cups of candle wax as lights, more than 70 people gathered in the Castro May 15 to honor those who lost their lives to AIDS.

The event was part of the International AIDS Candlelight Memorial Campaign, founded by the non-profit organization Global Health Council. It was organized in the Castro by a variety of community organizations. The memorial is a worldwide campaign, taking place in 93 countries this year.

The memorial campaign serves to raise the awareness of AIDS, to support those living with it, and to encourage community mobilization, but for many participants, it’s first and foremost about paying respect to those lost to AIDS.

San Francisco resident Pete King has been participating in the candlelight vigils since moving to the city in 1984. He has lost many friends to the epidemic.

“This event is really special,” King said. “In my opinion, and for me, it’s about remembering my friends. For those who have lived in the city for many years, it’s much more of a personal experience.”

As of December 2004, an estimated 39.4 million people worldwide are living with HIV, the UNAIDS, a United Nations program working to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS said.

An estimated 4.9 million were infected in 2004 alone and about 3.1 million died of the disease.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty participated in the vigil. Dufty has been active in issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and was one of the speakers at the event. He said he was not there primarily as a politician, but as someone who had lost close friends to AIDS.

“It’s an opportunity for me to memorialize and think of the number of friends who are not here anymore,” Dufty said.

Many participants walked alone in silence as the group moved from the intersection of Castro and Market to the Life Garden one block east. The garden once served AIDS hospices in Castro with cut-flowers and food. Yesterday, the garden’s staircases were overgrown by flowers, and the wall painting to the left displayed the words "VIDA – LIFE."

The event continued with a variety of speakers introduced by Gary Virginia, a previous recipient of an AIDS Hero Award. The Hero Awards are named after Bay Area AIDS activists and honor AIDS community activists. Each year, multiple activists are honored with awards, one of them for Lifetime Achievements.

The members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc., a non-profit organization, also spoke at the event. According to their Web site, www.thesisters.org, the group is an organization of “21st Century Queer Nuns.” Sister Hellen Wheels said her organization has lost many of its members to AIDS.

“It’s important to remember the people who had AIDS who are no longer with us. We lost so many to the disease,” Wheels said.

The group is essentially non-religious, but seeks to serve their communities and raise funds for those in need. Often seen dressed in heavy makeup and colorful outfits, the sisters brought some humor to a serious event, Dufty said.

“This is a great thing to experience," Dufty said. "The sisters combine seriousness and humor… It makes it much more palatable for people."

Speakers included Dufty, youth activist Devin Anderson, Michael Siever, the director of the Stonewall Project, which serves gay and bisexual men by providing HIV prevention, harm reduction and health promotion.

Also speaking were the AIDS Hero Award Winners of 2005: transgender advocate Cecilia Chung, HIVStopsWithMe.org spokesperson Alejandro Diesta, Latino HIV activist Gustavo Cravioto, and Lifetime Achievement AIDS Hero Award winner Anne-Christine D’Adesky.

D’Adesky is the founder of the Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment, which provides HIV treatment to those infected by HIV during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. During a 100-day period, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, and many others were raped and infected with HIV.

Several themes connected the different speeches, including the importance of sex education in preventing HIV, the stigmatization of HIV and AIDS, and the memories of those lost to AIDS.

Dufty spoke on the importance of an open discussion on HIV and AIDS and said when he gained political power, this was a top priority on his agenda.

“I made a commitment to take this issue out of the closet and talk about it,” Dufty said.

Anderson, who has worked as a peer educator at the Bay Area Young Positive, a non-profit providing support to HIV positive people under 27, said sex education is extremely important to prevent HIV.

“If we continue to make sex and sex education taboo to talk about, people will continue to get infected,” Anderson said.

Several participants in the vigil said they hoped event such as it could help to increase awareness of AIDS. D’Adesky said she saw the upcoming years as critical, as treatment for the epidemic are beginning to appear, but at the same time, infection rates are increasing dramatically.

“I feel a lot of hope and a tremendous urgency to get people organized,” D’Adesky said.