Positive message: one bus. Six weeks. Six HIV-positive youths on a cross-country mission to wake young people up about AIDS.

"I never thought it'd happen to me," says 27-year-old Tom Donohue, recalling when he learned three years ago that he was HIV-positive. Like most people, Donohue was terrified when he got the news. But he became inspired as well. He visited the AIDS Memorial Quilt on World AIDS Day and realized something that would change his life. "It made me think, I have an opportunity being HIV-positive now that those who died earlier didn't have," he says. "I really wanted people to say I made a difference."

That desire led Donohue to found Who's Positive, a national nonprofit organization working to raise HIV awareness among young adults.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of all new HIV infections are in people under the age of 25. To draw attention to this statistic, Who's Positive is mounting Operation: Get Tested, a campaign in which six young HIV-positive people will embark on a six-week tour of approximately 35 high schools and colleges in 25 states to raise awareness of HIV. Beginning on October 15 and ending on December 1, World AIDS Day, the speakers will travel with six fellow activists aboard a 12-person sleeper tour bus. The plan is nothing if not ambitious. "It's difficult to find youth to talk about their status," says Tom. "But we've gathered real individuals."

The speakers include 21-year-old Cree Gordon, who contracted HIV while hustling afar his stepfather kicked him out of his house for being gay. "I was homeless and needed the money, but also [it was] a way to pretend that someone cared about me," says Gordon. "I took the [HIV] test.... When I was told I was positive, I went into a state of shock."

D'Jaun Black, a 22-year-old gay man from Detroit, was shocked by his results as well. "The first time I went for my results I sat for two hours before I got out of the car," he says. "I got to the clinic but turned around and left. I finally came back and got the results. When I found out I was positive, I felt the walls closing in. I said to myself, I'm not even 20; I can't die yet. I'm the first to go to college in my family; this can't happen to me."

Sharing these stories, though heartbreaking, is what makes Who's Positive work. "It's all about humanizing it and being intimate and sharing emotions," says Donohue, who believes this strategy can reach youths in a way statistics can't. To capitalize on that connection, Who's Positive has arranged for local agencies to conduct free HIV screenings after each program.

"We hope this will be the next step for HIV organizing among youth," says Donohue. "This tour will bring the movement and discussion about HIV/AIDS and youth to a place where it should've gone many years ago."

For more information visit www.whospositive.org.