Newsletters:
Fall 2002 Newsletter
A Letter from Vic Basile,
Executive Director
Greetings to all of our clients, friends,
volunteers and supporters. As many of you
know, Maryland’s budget is due for some
serious scrutiny in the coming legislative
session and this can only mean one thing:
CUTS! This belt-tightening could easily
translate into tough times for Moveable
Feast and the many other nonprofits that
provide badly needed services to people
living with HIV/AIDS. Dollars from the State
of Maryland make it possible for us to feed
and provide nutritional support for many of
our clients.
The hard reality is that without this
support, it will be impossible to continue
to serve all of these truly needy citizens.
We just do not have the capacity to raise
enough money from non-governmental sources
to offset such a big loss. My sense is that
if most legislators understood how important
these services are - how essential they are
to the very lives of the people receiving
them - they would rule out reductions in
funding.
When the time comes for the delegates in
Annapolis to balance the budget, our
challenge is to make sure they understand
that it must not be balanced by taking food
away from very sick people, many of whom are
children. While we at Moveable Feast will be
doing our very best to educate them, your
help could literally tip the balance in the
right direction. Consequently, I urge each
of you to let your elected representatives
know how much you care about Maryland’s
support for AIDS services.
If we are to succeed in protecting this
funding, our efforts must begin now, not
after the budget cuts are made. Before the
beginning of the next legislative session,
we must make sure that our legislators know
the full scope of the AIDS epidemic in
Maryland – that it ranks fifth in the nation
in the rate of infections that over 23,000
residents of our state are infected with
HIV; that 13,000 have died and that 100% of
Moveable Feast’s clients fall below the
federal poverty level. They must know the
full impact this horrible disease is having
on the residents of this great state. Every
legislator in the state should know these
facts so they will not cut essential,
life-saving services.
Only by being vigilant and by making our
voices heard will we keep HIV/AIDS in the
center of the radar screen. In these very
troubled times, with so many global threats,
it would be easy to lose sight of the
important human needs here at home. If we
allow that to happen, not only will the AIDS
crisis go unchecked, not only will our
fellow citizens suffer unnecessarily, but
terrorism will have scored another victory
by disrupting important domestic priorities.
"Your
passion will cause them to rethink their
positions and will challenge their
stereotypes.”
To help keep us on course, I am asking
you to help Moveable Feast by letting your
legislators know where your priorities lie.
Although it may seem ineffective, the best
way to accomplish this goal is to personally
contact your elected representatives in the
State Assembly. Letters, phone calls and
personal visits really do work. They
communicate your views in a way that are
certain to be heard.
To be even more effective, extend your
educational efforts to those around you.
That doesn’t necessarily mean parading down
Main Street. You can be a powerful educator
just by bringing the issue into
conversations around the water cooler. Let
your acquaintances know you care. Your
passion will cause them to rethink their
positions and will challenge their
stereotypes. If we do not do all that we can
to make a difference, who will? If we do not
speak up, what will happen to those who
depend on us?
Thanks so much for all you do to make
Moveable Feast work.
Sincerest wishes for health and
prosperity,
Vic Basile
Executive Director/advocate
1 Maryland
facts are from the Maryland AIDS
Administration website:
www.dhmh.state.md.us/AIDS
People On The Move gets the homeless population
where it needs to go
One of the most vital services provided
by Moveable Feast is also one of the
organization’s least known. The People On
The Move program has transported 32,683
homeless and transient people in the last
year, picking them up from shelters and soup
kitchens and dropping them off at social
service and healthcare locations throughout
the city.
“This is a fantastic program,” said Vince
Williams, Operations Director for Moveable
Feast. “This program allows homeless people
to have a productive day, just like you and
me, and to feel like they have accomplished
something each day,” Williams said.
129
number of people transported per day.
5,365
number of children transported in the past
year.
The two 15-passenger vans used by
Moveable Feast run a regular route through
the city, stopping at the same times in the
mornings at shelters around the city.
Passengers are then dropped off at
healthcare and social service locations such
as Healthcare for the Homeless.
In the afternoon, the busses make the
trips in reverse; picking people up at those
locations and dropping them back at the
shelters before the doors are locked for the
evening.
“People must leave the shelters by
7:30a.m. Without these shuttles, people
would have to walk long distances in all
kinds of weather to get to services,”
Williams said. “And at the end of the day, a
lot of these shelters only have a limited
number of beds, so if you aren’t in line on
time, you won’t get a bed and you’ll get
locked out. We make sure these folks get
back in time.”
As an important goal of the program,
People On The Move endeavors to hire former
consumers of Moveable Feast’s services as
shuttle drivers.
Between August of 2001 and August of
2002, People On The Move transported more
than 11,000 men, 15,000 women, and 5,000
children, an average of 129 people a day.
Dee, a driver for People On The Move
In addition to People On The Move,
Moveable Feast also provides medical
transportation to clients who need to attend
appointments or group meetings.
“It allows this population to reach
services that would be otherwise
unreachable.”
The Many Heroes of Moveable Feast
Moveable Feast provides nearly 600
clients a week with the food and nutrition
that they need to survive as they battle
against the effects of HIV/AIDS. Each of
these clients is a person to Moveable Feast,
a face that we see every day and a hand that
we shake when we deliver meals.
As a result of this human approach to our
services, 98% of our clients gave Moveable
Feast’s services satisfactory or excellent
marks in a recent survey.
One such client, named John, has
accolades for Moveable Feast. A perceptive
man and a philosopher of sorts, John lives
in Baltimore, a 60-year old father of two
children, his youngest daughter being eight.
John now receives groceries from Moveable
Feast, but he once received home delivered
meals when he was too weak to prepare any
food. His daughters receive meals as well,
for which John is grateful. “The meals allow
my children to grow healthy and they
stabilize my health to where I can move
about and be helpful to my kids. These meals
have kept me here for a long time.”
The security and assurance of knowing
where his next meal was coming from, in
addition to the meals themselves, has helped
to keep John sane through his struggles with
HIV.
“The journey
has been much easier and more pleasant
because of Moveable Feast and all of those
caring souls who have helped carry me
through this. We should all be so lucky.”
The meals, he said, help him to make it
day to day. “I wouldn’t even be able to
digest the medicine I have to take if
Moveable Feast wasn’t there, and if so many
caring people didn’t contribute.”
Whenever John is well enough to be active
he donates his time by delivering meals to
other Moveabe Feast clients.
This volunteer service, even under his
own pressing circumstances, encapsulates
John’s view on the world and community
involvement. “This problem is everywhere,
and my problem is your problem, and your
problem is mine,” he said.
“I’ve done my fair share to make
conditions the way that they are. Even
against my own self,” John continued.
“Everybody does their fair share to make the
world good and bad. You can’t go around
smiling all the time. You just have to make
sure you do your part to make the world
good. So it’s important that people step up
to the plate. Because today people might not
need the help, but tomorrow they will if
their luck turns, if their world turns
upside down.”
The fact that Moveable Feast has a
waiting list is something that makes John
ashamed. “Why should there be a waiting list
for these services in a wealthy country like
we have. It makes me ashamed. Some people
need to give more.”
“I’m not angry or upset,” John said. “I
was privileged to be here in this world, and
the journey has been much easier and more
pleasant because of Moveable Feast and all
of those caring souls who have helped carry
me through this. We should all be so lucky.”
On Wasting Syndrome and Those Who Need Nutrition
Until the mid-1990’s when protease
inhibitors were introduced in the AIDS
medication arsenal, those infected were
forced to cope with such debilitating, and
often fatal conditions as Pneumocystis
Carinii Pneumonia (PCP), Cytomegalovirus (CMV),
and Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), which produced
the “AIDS lesions” that were so stigmatizing
during the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
Thanks to advancements in medical
science, these symptoms are now less common.
But those opportunistic infections have now
been replaced by another condition, “Wasting
Syndrome,” which has been labeled as the
number one health issue among People Living
With HIV/AIDS by some of the medical
profession’s most eminent experts.
Wasting Syndrome, which can be a side
effect of medications, is defined as an
involuntary loss of more than 10% of one’s
baseline body weight, often associated with
symptoms of chronic diarrhea, weakness and
unexplained fever. It is a crippling
condition that restricts many, who are
unable to work or care for themselves, to
the confines of their homes.
Modern HIV/AIDS medicine now requires the
digestion of voluminous doses of
medications, nicknamed “drug cocktails,”
that require the strictest bodily
environments to work. Proper nutrition is
key to making these medications effective.
Even for individuals who do respond to
HIV drugs, weight loss can still occur for
other reasons: depression, loss of appetite
brought on by the medications, and low
testosterone levels.
By Dr. Tim Holland, MD,
Board of Directors
"Wasting
Syndrome has been labeled the number one
health issue among People Living With
HIV/AIDS.”
Reversing this potentially fatal
condition can require drastic medical steps.
Steroids and marijuana derivatives are often
advocated measures doctors use when
attempting to stimulate a patient’s
appetite. And sometimes more extreme
measures, such as surgically implanted
feeding tubes, are needed to deliver
adequate nutrition.
Combating wasting syndrome and related
nutritional issues is the sole purpose for
Moveable Feast’s existence.
Moveable Feast employs a full-time
registered dietitian to facilitate such
evaluations. And the diets we prepare are
specially tailored to the needs of our
clients, such as patients with kidney
failure who need to monitor the amounts of
protein they eat. Nutritional supplements
are often added to regular meals to increase
caloric intake.
Sadly, the need for Moveable Feast’s
services, in a city that has been so
terribly ravaged by HIV, is stronger now
than ever before. But with special attention
and applied expert knowledge of nutrition,
death is no longer an inescapable result of
wasting syndrome.
Statistics
 |
5th
Baltimore’s rank among American
cities for new HIV cases.
23,158
Current number of Marylanders living
with HIV/AIDS as of March 31, 2002.
81.9%
Percent of Maryland’s HIV/AIDS cases
that are African American.
13,003
Number of Marylanders who have died
of AIDS, as of March 31, 2002.
Maryland facts
are from the Maryland AIDS
Administration website:
www.dhmh.state.md.us/AIDS |
