Well, so once a day didn’t quite work out, but here is another update…
Last weekend was Chicago’s annual pride fest and parade. As I go to a church in the heart of Chicago’s "Boy’s Town" I really got a large dose of colorful fun. Everyone and everything in the neighborhood, including our sanctuary was decked out in rainbows. On Sunday our service was a very moving tribute to diversity, even more so than usual. Everyone was in a very festive mood. After church we had a potluck picnic and watched the VERY LONG parade. It was so neat to be able to see a group of people that have been so harassed, intimidated, and bullied because of who they are be able to celebrate with such a bold statement.
At work I’ve been working on our Housing and Health study. It is a research project funded to see if providing housing has an impact on health and prevention of disease (duh! It seems ridiculous this actually has to be studied!). Chicago will receive 105 rental subsidies to give to our clients (LA and Baltimore also are in the study). We just started taking applications on June 15 and have been slowly processing them. The really sad part of the process is that we received over 150 applications on the FIRST DAY. These are from people who are homeless or nearly homeless (for example, surfing between friends couches). These are only people who have HIV. Imagine how many more homeless/nearly homeless people are still out there in Chicago! Now add in all those people who aren’t technically "homeless" but are just barely scraping together their rent each month. Really pulls at the heartstrings and certainly makes 105 subsidies seem like a trivial effort. Hopefully studies like this will make the case for more housing.
Ok how about once a month??? Anyway here is another update, thank you to the two or three people that actually hang in there and wait for me to provide an update :)
Last time I wrote I talked about one of the big projects I am working on (the Housing and Health study) so today I’ll talk about the other big one I’m involved in. A few months ago AFC got the opportunity to get a grant from the Office of Minority Health. The project we proposed was a collaboration of African-American church leaders that would come together to network and learn, and also go back to their congregations and help enhance or start an HIV/AIDS ministry. The grant would provide 10 churches with $10,000. The African-American community has been really hard hit by HIV (and just about every other awful thing that can happen to humans). In Chicago, over half of the people newly diagnosed with cases are African-American. It is our hope that the church leaders will be able to reach the community and make a bigger impact in preventing HIV and caring for those who do have it. It is especially important that this comes from the churches since they are such a pillar in the community (esp. the African-American community), because many churches have in the past encouraged stigma, and because the issues involved in the transmission of HIV are issues of great cultural importance that need to be addressed by the institutions that help us stay morally grounded.
We held a Bidders Conference where interested churches could come hear about the application process and get questions answered. We had 45 leaders come. The energy and spirit in the room was simply amazing. God was really moving there. At one point one of the leaders asked “What are you going to do for those of us who don’t get funded, how are you going to keep us involved?” Our Executive Director then asked: “Who would want to participate even if you don’t get funded?” 45 hands shot straight up. No hesitation. No waffling. They were going to fight this disease money or no money. We promised we would find a way to expand the initiative.
I also got to participate in the meeting where the funded partners were picked. It was a really interesting process. Each of the reviewers (a really neat mix of different community leaders) had been given half of the proposals (we had 24!). They were responsible for scoring three of them, and being the lead person on one proposal. They looked for strengths and weaknesses of each proposed program including things like qualifications of the leadership, involvement of the church in past HIV or health activities, and creativity/feasibility of the proposed work. At the review meeting each proposal was presented and the three who scored it either recommended it for funding or recommended to not fund it. After all of the proposals received the initial recommendations the group then had to narrow down to just 10 churches. In addition to the strengths/weaknesses in this stage they also considered things like where the church was located, and the influence the group thought the funded church could have beyond their church. They were able to narrow it down to 11 proposals, and finally decided which was the last church that would not get funded, although it was pretty heart wrenching. It was decided that we would approach our board and ask to fund all 11 at the original $10,000. If that wasn’t possible we suggested 11 at $9,000, and if that wasn’t possible the 11th church could be cut to fund the other 10. Our board met and decided to fund all 11 churches at $10,000!!
Thought I would share a few powerful words from my senator-to-be...
"(...) alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we're all connected as one people.
"If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs, and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
"It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.
"E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.
"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.
"The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
"We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?"
-- Illinois State Senator Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention
The housing and health study is now in full gear here at AFC. This is our client’s first week of appointments with the researchers. Next week some of them will begin their second meeting (where they get baseline blood work done). In a couple of weeks our first clients should get housing vouchers!! One problem we are running into is that some of the clients that applied have now left and don’t have contact with their case manager. That means we can’t track them down to tell them about their appointment time. It is a little frustrating since it is this highly mobile group that probably most needs the stability that could come from a housing voucher.
At home things are getting kinda lonely. It seems like my housemates aren’t home very much anymore. We did have a house meeting that went really well and decided we would do something symbolic for closing on the 9th since that will be the last evening we will all be together. Leah found a job and an apartment! She’ll be working at Mercy Home for Girls and Boys and living on the west side. Jason is heading down to the Lutheran School of Theology of Chicago. Kevin and Melissa are still hunting for both jobs and a place to live. I think we are all both eager and scared of the changes in store for next year. I’ll have a whole new group of housemates and a new neighborhood to gossip about!!
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