Nonthaburi
Thailand
Talat Khwan Thai AIDS Memorial Quilt since 1 December 1992
11 names
In 1992, the project Naam Chewit (Name of Life) started an HIV/AIDS newsletter with the slogan “Living together with HIV/AIDS”. Naam Chewit promotes live information on how people live together and with HIV/AIDS. The newspaper discusses alternative health care and medicine, getting together with friends discussing about living with HIV, and connecting people living with HIV to meet and talk. The issues in the newsletter became a voice of people living with HIV.
In the same year we have met people from the NAMES Project, San Francisco, and I had the opportunity to participate in their Quilt Training. I came back with an inspiring spirit from the power of the quilts. In Thailand, explaining a concept of making an individual memorial is something out of people’s mind. In Buddhism society, people live and die as part of a normal life circle. Making memorials for people who died with stigma and bad memories, is like condemning yourself or your family. However, after 5 years of the project existence, we gained permission to make 11 panels of individual friends, who participated in the project or were members of the newsletter.
Most of the Thai quilts were made by many school students, as the project collaborated with PWA groups and individuals to launch HIV/AIDS education in schools around the country. We share the stories of those who wish the memorial quilts would be made for them, we share the idea of how we can live together, we share sympathy with those who live with HIV, who may be one of the student’s family members. The activity was known as “Art to understand AIDS”. The quilts were later returned to exhibits in schools and also in public areas on World AIDS Day, and/or at local AIDS seminars and conferences.
Thai quilts participated in the Washington, DC public display in 1993, the AIDS Conferences 1994 in Yokohama and 1996 in Vancouver as well as many regional AIDS Conferences in the Philippines, Australia and in Thailand during the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific 1995, the GNP+ Conference 1997 and the International AIDS Conference Bangkok 2004.

Empower Foundation, Naam Chewit Project