For my Service-Learning project I am working with the group Positive Impact. Through my first meeting with Positive Impact as well as some of my own research I have learned a lot about the goals and aims of the organization. Positive Impact’s mission statement says that Positive impacts mission is to “provide culturual and competent mental health and prevention services to individuals affected by HIV.” This goal is carried out through the work of the organization’s psychologists and counselors who work with HIV/Aids patients to face the huge pressures and demands of their disease. I hadn’t thought about it before, but HIV/Aids patients deal with many mental issues outside of the physical ramifications of their disease-depression and family issues being the first two that come to mind. In addition to their mental counseling aims, Positive Impact also assumes a leadership role in the community to help prevention of HIV/Aids. And as a new program, Positive Impact is launching a substance-abuse counseling program to continue its history of serving the community.
Our group is helping the new substance-abuse counseling program run by Positive Impact to get off the ground. We will be working with Positive Impact to help publicize the program, mostly through print media. So we will be spending most of our volunteer hours designing and creating pamphlets, fliers and brochures that can be used to spread the word of Positive Impact’s substance abuse counseling program and to generate community knowledge and support of the organization. I plan to contribute on all levels of our project, from meeting with Positive Impact and coordinating logistics to designing our print media. I am no expert with computers but I think that I can be of use in that area with a little bit of practice.
I think that this project will be meaningful to me because it will give me a lot of gratification to work with such an incredible organization. I really admire the work that Postive Impact is doing and am very excited to help them. I have a lot of sympathy for both people afflicted by HIV/Aids and those with substance abuse problems. I especially hope for those who approach organizations like Positive Impact and seek solutions to the problems they face. So, it will give me great pleasure to know that I did some small part to positively influence the lives of those who are much less fortunate than myself.
This project intersects well with our course material because HIV/Aids is a sexually transmitted disease and the aim of our course is a focus on Sexuality. STD’s are sometimes considered taboo as are most sexual topics but I think that it is important to talk about them, especially when considering matters of prevention. Only by being comfortable with the topic of Sexuality can we be comfortable talking about HIV prevention, so the aims of our course are very important in making us more comfortable working with Positive Impact.
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