This month, State College-based AIDS awareness organization will embark on Operation: Get Tested, a nationwide bus tour to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and offer free HIV testing.

The organization Who's Positive will kick off the tour Oct. 15, National Latino HIV Awareness Day, and it will end Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, Who's Positive founder Tom Donahue said.

Donohue not only hopes to prevent and reduce infection rates among youth, he also wants to humanize HIV, he said.

Six HIV positive individuals between the ages of 18 and 26 will put faces to the disease by telling their personal stories at each stop on the tour. The tour will visit high schools and colleges in 33 cities but will not stop in State College, Donohue said.

"With the organization's founder and our national office here in State College, we figured that our resources are focused in this community all year long," Donohue said.

Who's Positive conducted a nationwide search for the speakers beginning in October of last year spending between 80 and 90 hours interviewing 40 HIV positive youths, Donohue said.

"We talked to them, we let them tell their stories. Many were moving and all of them were unique in some form," he said.

Donohue said the speakers were chosen because of the emotions they shared.

Marissa Smith, a 19-year-old peer educator at the University of California San Diego, will share her story on the tour. Smith said she hopes to encourage young people to be tested for HIV.

"It's everyone's disease," Smith said. "People need to be aware that it's here, and it's not going anywhere soon."

At each stop, three of the six HIV positive team members will present their stories.

Students will enter the location and receive a sealed card containing a hypothetical HIV test result.

One member of the team will stand among their peers and begin the program by saying, "I may look like you, act like you, I might even be the same age as some of you, but could any of you ever tell that I am HIV positive?" Donahue said.

This team member will share the details of his or her story, then lead a discussion about how the hypothetical test results could change the students' lives to encourage the audience to evaluate their own actions and behaviors, Donohue added.

Following the discussion, the two remaining team members will tell their stories and urge students to be tested for HIV, he said.

Operation: Get Tested will use the OraQuick ADVANCE Rapid HIV-1/2 Antibody Test, the only Food and Drug Administration approved test that can detect the virus with 99 percent accuracy in as little as 20 minutes, Marybeth Ferrigno, marketing manager for OraSure Technologies, said.

Operation: Get Tested plans to test thousands of young adults across the country, Donohue said.

Penn State students can receive the OraQuick test by contacting University Health Services' Office of Health Promotion and Education at 814-865-6538. There is no charge and results are back in 2 to 3 weeks.