New AmeriCorps Team to Help Fight AIDS in Michigan

Michigan AIDS Coalition (MAC) announced it has fielded its sixteenth AmeriCorps team in the metro-Detroit area. The new team will help non-profits enhance their services in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the area. The program is operated locally in collaboration with AIDS United, a Washington, D.C. based national non-profit. AIDS United has provided grants, technical assistance, advocacy and policy since 1989, channeled through a network of twenty Community Partnerships across America. MAC is its Community Partnership in Michigan.

"We are enormously pleased to be one of only eight AIDS United partnerships fielding teams," says MAC CEO Terry Ryan. "Being part if the AmeriCorps program has made an enormous impact locally. When we began our first team in 1997, we had no idea it would be this successful. We have become somewhat of an internship for new people to be trained to enter the field of HIV/AIDS services," he explained.

Now more than 26 alumni of this program currently work in non-profits in the metro area. In addition, MAC estimates the 144 members from the previous fifteen teams have completed nearly 250,000 hours of service with an estimated in-kind value of nearly $5 million contributed locally.

AmeriCorps Host Agencies for team members this year include Alternatives for Girls, ACCESS, Institute for Population Health, Community Health Awareness Group, and Affirmations and Horizons Project/WSU sharing a member. Each member will work approximately four days a week at their Host Agency and the fifth day of the week is reserved for the team to collectively choose a variety of other community projects.

Team recruitment begins in January each year with team selection completed by May 1. For more information, please contact Terry Ryan at www.michiganaidscoalition.org or (248) 545-1435, ext. 123.

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