Connecting on a Positive Note

Thursday, 08 April 2010 08:02

Creating a possibility for love is Ben Sassman, owner of The Positive Connection, a love website created uniquely for people living with the HI Virus. If you have never contemplated on the positives of the HI Virus, perhaps now is a time to look beyond your thoughts. Ben Sassman who grew in the dusty roads of Steenberg, in the Western Cape, made a conscious decision to help others and this stems from his upbringing where his parents taught him to always help the less fortunate. “I come from a poor background and if I see a situation where I can help with my skills then I will step up to the plate. I love and hurt just like everyone else so I am no different with my mistakes, but I feel a small contribution is better than no contribution at all”, Ben said. In 2003 Sassman, a father of three boys a husband to Norma launched “The Positive Connection”, the world’s first ever dating site for people living with HIV. Describing to us what brought about the idea, Ben continued to say,” I was visiting friends in Cape Town as I had lived and worked in Johannesburg for a long time and I met a friend of mine at a social gathering who disclosed his status to me. Later he mentioned how difficult it was to meet women and disclosing his status to them. As you can imagine once he disclosed he never got a goodbye kiss or a second date. In my ignorance I told him he should rather date online, he said he could register online and meet more women but he would still be faced with the dilemma of disclosing his status”. On his return to Johannesburg, Ben underwent some research online, visiting countless number of Online Dating Sites to see how the registration process was. “I was shocked when I learnt that none of the sites asked you for your HIV/AIDS status. That was when I came up with the idea of starting a website solely for people living with HIV/AIDS”, he said. Ben was determined and set on making this dream a success. The hurdles he came across only drove him more towards the goal of succeeding. He added to say, “The only problem was the cost of the site as I did not want my members to pay for this service. I wanted the registration and communication to be completely free. Setting up was a major expense and keeping it running was also expensive. The site has been up since 2003 and it is still free to all my members. I could not see myself charging people who are trying to live health lives or people who are in need of having a normal life. This was a choice I had to make right from the start”. Keeping tabs on how everything is going on the website does not require human intervention from Ben or anyone as the whole system is electronically run. “I access the site to monitor stats and to update it with breaking or latest news about HIV/AIDS etc. My members constantly send me emails thanking me for the site and how they met each other and fell in love. These emails bring joy to my life because it means that the site is doing what it is intended for”, Ben mentioned. Although there is plenty of good feedback, Ben says there is also bad feedback from people wanting to know whether they should also start a cancer website, as they feel that this particular website isolates and marginalises people. “My answer is always very simple…If you sleep with someone who has cancer you will not wake up in the morning having cancer...We are dealing with a deadly disease and this is why a dating site like mine is a positive thing. The good comments are from my members or friends of my members as they are meeting people online and falling in love. Some have gotten married as well or are living together; this outweighs the negative comments I get”, he added. Through the work and extensive research that Ben has done since 2002, he now has a greater depth of knowledge in people living with this disease. “I have taught my three sons the myths and ignorance about HIV/AIDS, how they can interact with people and what to do if one of their friends is bleeding at school. I think we all need to educate ourselves about HIV/AIDS as ignorance or lack of interest is not going to solve the situation we may find ourselves in”, he says. Ben, who lost a friend to HIV says he gets a gratifying feeling knowing that he is doing something great for someone. He makes an example about this particular friend, whom he lost in the disease, who took three days to tell his parents that he was gay, and eight months to tell them he was HIV positive. He comments to say, “if it’s that difficult telling the people that love you unconditionally about your situation, imagine how difficult it must be telling a stranger across the table on your first date.” Ben has hosted Greet and Meet parties, which were sponsored by SABC and Reuters, the news agency. He intends on planning a third party this year as all the members have allegedly had fun in the previous ones. Discussing his plans for 2010, Ben mentioned that the site has 46% of its members living outside South Africa and that the original site crashed in 2007 as there were too many people visiting the site at the same time. He continued to say, “The site was growing at an alarming rate, one I could not have predicted, the same signs are showing up on the new site as it keeps on slowing down. My plan is to upgrade it again, but this time I want to triple the dating software, and once I find the best software, I will upgrade it”. Either than his commitment to helping HIV people, Sassman recently embarked on a project to give electricity to over 3000 rural and farm schools in South Africa, which are currently operating without electricity, off the National Electricity Grid owned by ESKOM, by using Wind Turbines. “I have started installing Turbines at two schools in the Eastern Cape, I am doing this project with the support from companies like Microsoft, Intel Computers, Lexmark, Eskom and Kayema, who will be supplying their products or services to all the schools I electrify, Ben concluded. Contact Ben Sassman at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it