25 faces: Leaders fighting HIV/AIDS in Colorado

16 Briceson Ducharme / Ginger Sexton

From stuffing envelopes and working with the food bank to volunteering for Project Angel Heart and even creating benefit fundraisers like The Apocalyptic Ball, Briceson Ducharme – better known by his drag name, Ginger Sexton – knows the importance of awareness funding for HIV/AIDS.

For the past two years, the famous Ginger Sexton’s Apocolypic Ball has raised close to $30,000 for CAP. This year will be the third event, which has changed Ducharme’s life, he said.

HIV/AIDS is a personal struggle: Ducharme was diagnosed with HIV eight years ago. The changes he’s seen on the issue have been tremendous. “I can now let the world know that I am positive,” Ducharme said, “and yes, it may scare some people still, but most others are curious and so I can educate people from my knowledge and from my living with, and not dying from the disease.”

For Ducharme, after losing a close friend to AIDS, the work he continues to do is to help change perceptions. “No matter who you are, it can and will affect you,” Ducharme said. “But you can also have a positive effect on those around you. And I have shown people that you can live with HIV and still make a positive change in the world doing so. We live, breathe, cry, laugh, run and dance as well as the next but it just happens that we get to put a symbol next to our names, and that symbol is a positive one,” he said.