HYDEIA BROADBENT: Thank you. I was born in 1984. My birth mother was an IV drug user who infected herself and passed it on to me at birth. I was adopted when I was an infant and diagnosed at three. They said that I wouldn't live to be five. I started speaking out because kids weren't as open as I was. I would tell somebody in a heartbeat, "I have AIDS." And I didn't care. I didn't know that there was something wrong with having AIDS. I didn't know I was supposed to be ashamed. I didn't know that I didn't have a future. Well, let me tell you about my life now. I graduated high school. I will be a freshman starting January at North Carolina Century University. I am 20. I've had boyfriends. I have best friends. I have one mother and one father, and I've also been on "Oprah," "20/20," "Maury," and "BET" numerous times talking to people, telling them how important it is to get tested and know your status. So I guess I didn't fit the criteria of what people expected me to be, and I'm proud of that because now my sister is able to say that she has HIV without anybody in our community fearing her. I'm proud because I have kids that go to my school that can say that they have HIV and not worry about being kicked out. So what I'm saying today is that that's me.

That's my story. And the reason I do what I do is because I feel it's important for people to be comfortable in their own skin, because it wasn't that long ago that I remember hearing about Ryan White being kicked out of town or people not wanting him to go to school, or hearing about my best friend's grandparents disowning her because she was infected. And there's so much acceptance now, but another problem we're having is people aren't talking about HIV/AIDS to their kids. Don't assume that your kids aren't doing it. Don't assume that your kids don't know, because they all hear stuff, especially if they go to school. And it doesn't matter if it's a private school. If you have cable, the internet, they know about sex and they know about AIDS. And we shouldn't assume our kids aren't doing what we're doing. I'm a daughter. We see everything. We may not speak on it. You may be thinking you're sneaky. We see everything. I'm not saying my mom is doing anything, but, you know, she's divorced and she looks pretty good for her age, and she dates. She does look good for her age. I'm sorry. And she dates. Does that mean that she's not supposed to be healthy? You know, I tell my mom, "Hey, Mom," you know, "I hope you're using protection." You know, she'll slap me on my back because she's not doing nothing. But how many of us are that open with our daughters or our sons? My mom can actually sit down with me now and have the sex talk and ask me, "What are you doing? Are you okay? Are you protecting yourself? This is a communication that is very important this day and age, and not everybody has that. We need to open. If you feel you're not educated, you can get on the internet, and once you put in AIDS, 50 sites will pop up.

Everybody's got the internet, and if you don't, ask a friend. Talk about it, and don't assume that you're safe because I was a virgin when I became infected. I didn't do drugs and I wasn't gay, but I'm infected. AIDS does not have a certain area of people that it affects. It doesn't care if you're Black, White, rich, or poor. It doesn't care if you're in junior high, high school, college. It doesn't care what type of career you have. It doesn't care what your income is. It does not care. One time is all it takes. And it doesn't matter if you're in what you think is a committed relationship, because what's the other person's view? And this is something that my mom had to teach me, that I always have to talk when I become sexually active and I go off to college, as she says, because she'll just die if she finds out her little girl is having sex. This is something you always have to talk to your partner. You have to take your partner down to the clinic and get tested together. If you can't talk to your partner, why are you giving your body to this partner? And this isn't just for teenagers. This is for adults, because I hear of grown women who will do anything to keep their man, may it allow him to have an extra girlfriend. This is reality. This is what I have to look up to, that I have to lower my standards and allow you to have a thing on the side? I don't think so. But this is reality.

So it's important that you talk to your daughters and your sons. Let them know. Don't be judgmental. That's very important. And we know it's hard to talk to your kids. It's hard for us to talk to you sometimes, but it's important. And if you feel it's important to talk to your friends, too, about your lives because it's very clear that a lot of people are sexually active. This isn't a secret. It's in the movies. It's in the music. It's in all types of music, not just hip-hop or rap, all type of music. And it's in all type of movies because I've seen "Pretty Woman." I didn't know what "Pretty Woman" was for a while. And I know that it's something that we don't want to talk about, but if we don't talk about it, we might not have a future because there is on cure for AIDS. And just like she was denied by an insurance company, do you know how many of my friends that has happened to, that they can't be picked up because they're too costly? This is a billion-dollar-a-year company. That is the reality of this disease. And look at your kids. This is not something that you want to happen to them. I have lived a very blessed life, but if I could change that for my next-door neighbor or I could change that for my mom's best friend's daughter, I don't want them to become infected. It hasn't hampered my future in any way, but why should somebody have to go through that just because we didn't talk about it? We talk about everything else. Why can't we talk about this? That's all I have to say right now, so thank you.