October 1997

Funding Challenges Are Nothing More Than Faith Challenges

by Sue W. Scott

From a Fundraiser

Traditional funding for HIV/AIDS work is on the wane. Even the thoughtful resolutions on AIDS passed by the General Convention last summer went unfunded. The reasons for this decline are various, ranging from apathy and tiredness to confidence that we’ve found the treatment, if not the cure, and the ensuing belief that there is no longer a need.

In many ways, we’ve been in a declared state of emergency for seventeen years, a state that is hard to sustain. However, I believe that there is another factor at work among service providers. The very fact that we have had such generous funding works against us. This funding has made it possible for us to expand our services beyond our wildest hopes in the early days of the epidemic but it has also made it possible for us to become institutions and institutions do not readily volunteer for risks.

Tired as we may be, HIV/AIDS is still an emergency around the world, an emergency that demands that we return to our roots and our history. We had nothing but the hope and faith that we can change things and the courage to risk being out on the edge of the limb in those early days. What we didn’t have was money, but our vision, our passion, and our faith generated what was needed.

The epidemic in the United States has widened across our society, reaching far beyond the sons and brothers of those first days. Many people with HIV today are among the traditionally disenfranchised. Many cope with much more than HIV; homelessness, addiction, mental illness, and racism are just a few of the complications. New hope, new faith and new courage to risk are called for.

NEAC, the Episcopal church and the entire religious community can lead the way into all the corners of our world which HIV has invaded. We can support needle exchange; we know it reduces transmission and new infections without encouraging people to become addicts. We can reach out with aggressive campaigns to promote testing and education in the hidden parks and public bathrooms where HIV is transmitted and then taken home to families. We can support the maintenance of anonymous testings sites to insure that these hidden people will come forward for testing.

Most importantly, we must claim our faith and lead the way in risking as we embrace these new challenges. It is one thing to have created institutions in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Let us not allow this plague to be institutionalized. Courage is what is needed now; the money will follow.

Sue is the Executive Director of AIDS Service Center, which began in 1987 as a telephone answering machine under a stairwell in All Saints Church in Pasadena, California and today is a $6 million agency delivering comprehensive services and preventive education. She is also a member of the boards of NEAC and AIDS Action Council.