Time is a luxury for those who are able to afford it. Given the data and statistics around HIV/AIDS in Black communities, we are quickly running out of time. Hence, getting involved becomes paramount to the mission of turning HIV around in Black communities.

We want you to think back to your early childhood days and think for a second about someone you knew who was involved in something important. Whether it was giving out food on Thanksgiving or Christmas, shoveling your neighbor's sidewalk during a heavy snow, taking a child to school, helping someone up after they fell, all of these are ways of getting involved.

It's no different when it comes to National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2010; we need youth, young adults, seniors, professionals, faith leaders, actresses, actors, authors, and the entire Black community concerned with this crisis to get involved. We need you to become engaged.

Many will ask what can they do. We ask that you begin at home, start with those who are in your immediate circle and educate them about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Black America and then take inventory of the skills, talents, and resources you have and then make a conscious effort to use them for this initiative. Of course, financial resources are needed - that's a given in our current economic crisis. But, your time and energy is also needed.

After you have taken inventory of your immediate circle, it's then time to go into your community and many hard hit areas where HIV seems to be spreading fast and get involved there. There are many nonprofit organizations that need volunteers to assist them from a governing and managing perspective, to answering the phone, to handing out flyers/condoms/lubricants, etc. Simply educating yourself about HIV and then sharing that message with others in Black communities is a way to get involved.

Whatever your talent or skill, it is needed and can be used to help bring the numbers down and turn this crisis around. There's too much riding on Black America for HIV to hold us back. We have a symbol of hope and awesome possibility with President Obama in the White House, now let's keep Black America alive and well by getting involved and letting each other know that we are all we have.

Make today your time to commit to making Black communities better or reboot your commitment to working to turn this epidemic around. Until there's a cure, all we have is one another.