wfn.org | Working with AIDS changes perceptions

[BethAH <BethAH@mbm.org>]

May 9, 2001
Beth Hawn
Mennonite Board of Missions
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

May 9, 2001

MVSer finds working with AIDS changes perceptions

Grant Rissler is serving through Mennonite Voluntary Service as a
writer and photographer.  After spending a year as intern at the
Mennonite Central Committee United Nations office in Manhattan,
he is traveling for five months by bus to 20 other MVS and
Short-Term Mission sites, gathering the stories and experiences
of other volunteers and communities.  A weekly column by Grant
can be found on the web at www.MBM.org.

SAN FRANCISCO (CHM/MBM) – “The AIDS we’re looking at today is
different from the AIDS in the ’80s,” said Tara Gingerich, one of
the members of the MVS unit here.  “And I think we need to deal
with it in a different way.”

This is one of the lessons, Gingerich said, that she has learned
working at the Richard M. Cohen Residence here, a home for people
dealing with “disabling AIDS,” who often must also struggle with
mental illness, drug abuse or potential homelessness.

Gingerich, a native of Kitchener, Ontario, serves as activities
coordinator for the house, planning picnics, arts and crafts
times, trips to the movies, or simply a game of Rummikub for the
residents who often have little energy or emotional will to get
out on their own.

“Just to engage them in something else is really important,”
Gingerich said.  “Many do the same things every day, or stay in
their rooms.  It’s frustrating for them to have such poor
health.  They don’t have a lot of people outside Cohen and they
don’t have the energy to go out and deal with things.”

Gingerich stopped in the middle of the conversation to ask one of
the residents if he’s coming on the picnic planned for that day.
She lets him know that they already have a sandwich packed for
him.  She comes back to sit in the flower garden that several of
the residents tend.

“I try to do as many activities as possible,” she continued.
“It’s hard [to organize them and get people involved], but I like
to always be there with a positive energy that may influence
someone.  They have so little control over their lives.  I’m
happy to be there for them.”

For Gingerich, who majored in psychology at university and who is
interested in issues of social health, working at Cohen has been
an opportunity to help and an opportunity to learn.

“It seemed like the perfect job,” she said.  “It wasn’t the AIDS
that pulled me in, because I’d never worked with it before.  But
being here I’ve realized it really is a great field to be in
because it touches on so many different things that were
important to me:  homelessness, mental health, social issues.”

Working with people who have AIDS has heightened her awareness of
the challenges AIDS sufferers face, Gingerich said.  Those
challenges for the people she sees every day range from not being
able to control what they eat because of drug side effects, to
coping with abandonment by loved ones, to dealing with the
general stigma that North American society attaches to AIDS.

That awareness is something Gingerich said she hopes others will
come to grasp.

“[My hope] is for people to change their attitudes toward AIDS,
and how they work with people [who have AIDS],” she said.  “My
attitude is different because I’ve been working with them.  As
new medicines come along [and people with AIDS live longer], we
can’t shut the door.

“It’s also important to look at AIDS not as a national or North
American issue, but as one that is all over the world, where
people don’t have the medicines we do to try and help limit the
problem,” she said

Both locally and globally, Gingerich said, “We need to realize
that these people are our neighbors and our friends, and we need
to embrace them instead of sending them away.”

Mennonite Voluntary Service is a joint program of the Commission
on Home Ministries of the General Conference Mennonite Church and
Mennonite Board of Missions of the Mennonite Church.
* * *
Grant E. Rissler       PHOTO AVAILABLE