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Big Bend Cares provides someone to ask, someone to answer difficult questions
By Karen Cavanaugh
For 20 years, Big Bend Cares has been the only AIDS service provider in the eight-county Big Bend region. That means there are more than 500 clients from Perry to Apalachicola who count on us for medications, doctors' visits, dental work, mental health care, housing and utility assistance, transportation, groceries, support groups, and educational programming.
It is not just the hundreds of people who already know they are HIV positive who count on Big Bend Cares. These days nearly half of our clients are women, which means we are helping them feed their children, and keeping them strong enough to continue taking care of their grandkids. We help the grandmother who takes care of her HIV-positive grandson, because there was nobody else to take care of him after his own mom died of AIDS. We help the children whose dad needs to find the words to tell his children that he is HIV positive.
We also provide free HIV testing to about 700 people a year. Most are negative, but receive that good news with a renewed commitment to pick their partners more judiciously, and to practice safer sex. We have seen lots of sobbing young college women come through our doors, and walk out with a negative test result, but humbled and still a little shaky. Sadly, we have also seen dean's list students who have put in a lot of volunteer hours with us return later to enroll for services when their worst nightmares come true.
And there are more than 12,500 local people who have benefited from our free presentations. Church groups, youth groups, business organizations, TCC, FSU and FAMU students, and the senior citizens at the local community centers have all had recent opportunities to ask questions and get solid answers. Twenty-five years into this pandemic, the stigma born of ignorance and fear is still with us. In recent months we have been asked things like, "Doesn't the H in HIV stand for hepatitis?" and "Is it true there are prostitutes in New Orleans who have been exposed to so many strains of the virus that they are now immune?" The former was from a college professor; the latter from a college student. Thankfully, there was someone for them to ask, someone to answer respectfully.
The work is hard. It is frustrating, heartbreaking, hugely rewarding, and most importantly, it is necessary. But there is reason for hope. Since Big Bend Cares incorporated in 1987, we have seen the number of victims climb to the millions, but we have also seen the life expectancy stretch into multiple decades.
The agency benefits from more than 5,000 volunteer hours a year. Dozens of young people from the universities come through our doors every year, some to assist the case managers, some to staff the front desk. Others train for peer-to-peer education. For others, it is a stopping point to hone their skills before they leave for sub-Saharan Africa or Eastern Europe with the Peace Corps.
Early on, local churches banded together and formed Canopy Connection, a multi-denominational volunteer alliance to provide pastoral support for clients and their families. Other churches have asked us to help parishioners who are infected, and parishioners who are not infected, but have to share a pew with someone who is. Many churches step up to bag groceries, to buy holiday gifts for clients' kids, and send checks that make so many of our other services possible.
There are board members and clients who have been around since our inception, businesses and government agencies who can be counted on every year to support our major fundraisers.
And there are dozens of new clients every month, and after 20 years, we here still here for them.
To learn more about Big Bend Cares' services and volunteer opportunities, please visit our
website at www.bigbendcares.org
or call us at 656-2437.
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