“Bro Online” – Connecting You With The Bros

PRESS RELEASE: March 19, 2008
“Bro Online” – Connecting You With The Bros

“Bro Online”, the first website in the world specifically for takatāpui tane (gay and bisexual men of Maori descent), is to be launched on Friday March 28.

Inspired by the popularity of social networking sites like Bebo and Facebook, “Bro Online” will allow users to register, create a profile, and interact with other takatāpui tane around the country. The site will also provide access to free condoms, sexual health advice, comic strips, and an online magazine which will publish stories about living with HIV and what it means to be takatāpui in 2008.

The website is an initiative of Hau Ora Takatāpui, a Maori health promotion team within the New Zealand AIDS Foundation which works to prevent the transmission of HIV among Maori men who have sex with men. One gay or bisexual man is diagnosed with HIV every five days in New Zealand, and Maori make up a proportional share of these worrying diagnoses.

“Sites like Bebo and Facebook have created huge online communities where people can meet new friends and hook-ups, but their main audiences are heterosexual and safe sex information is often nowhere to be seen,” says Jordon Harris, Kai Mahi for Hau Ora Takatāpui.
“We’ve been working extensively within our communities over the last several months to put together a resource which takatāpui tane can feel they own. We want it to be a hub for meeting new people, sharing news as well as gaining access to safe sex information and condoms where and when it’s needed.”

The site will also build on the success of the immensely popular – and controversial – Hau Ora Takatāpui poster released in 2006, “Toa Takatāpui: Warriors For Safe Sex”, which featured gay and bisexual Maori men performing a haka. The stories of these men have been incorporated into “Bro Online”.

“We want to provide an opportunity for other guys to stand up and be warriors for safe sex, to feel pride about being male, being gay and being Maori,” Harris says. “Although we may sometimes, as takatāpui tane, face prejudice by not having our maleness acknowledged, these guys have shown us that there is a way forward. Working together, we can fight the spread of HIV in our communities.”

“Bro Online” will be launched at Family Bar, 270 Karangahape Rd, Auckland at 9pm on Friday, March 28. The website can be found at: www.broonline.co.nz .

ENDS

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