October 1986

blue-collar instance.

worker, for

We do the same with the volunteers. I think their most common request is for someone in roughly the same area. You don't want someone in Brecksville if you live in Lakewood and travel is hard for you.

We want to have as good a Buddying as possible.

Cal: What you just said implies there are Buddies who are not gay.

Leh: A woman who is not gay trained in the September session Bill did. We hope the November training will bring in more straight Buddies, because we are getting requests from PWAS, who are IV-drug abusers or hemophiliacs. It's not that they couldn't relate to a gay person, but they might match up better with someone who's straight. Hopefully, our publicizing the Buddy proğram and the training will get more straight people involved.

McC: Our first Buddies were basically taken from our own volunteers, people who had hung in with the Support Committee for the past few months. Now we're ready for a larger outreach. We hope this interview will help. As Mark said, it would be nice if we could involve more

women, straights, and minorities. have a more representative group.

An older woman teacher from Amherst--of all places-who came to our last general meeting was very interested. She said that living out of town she couldn't be a Buddy to someone here, but could be an auxiliary Buddy, sending cards or making phone calls.

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of assigning more than one Buddy to a PWA. As our pool of volunteers increases, we'd like to do so for PWAS who need more care.

People might think they can't volunteer because they are too busy. But we aren't asking for an everyday commitment. If you have only one night a week when you could do something like this, we could team you with another volunteer. The two of you could provide a decent amount of contact throughout the week.

PWAS who are in remission from their illness and feeling good might need no more than a phone call.

Everyone gets through first bout of PCP, does ely gets strong again and puts weight back on. Then, it's social/emotional support they need. At the end, when they need physical support, the demands may be greater. But still it hasn't been overwhelming for us yet.

And PWAS in Cleveland can turn to their families for physical help. It's not like New York or San Francisco where people need everything because their families are back in Iowa or Dakota. Those people will demand much more from their Bud-

Gay Peoples Chronicle

they become

dies, because they their family.

Cal: What happens to a Buddy when the PWA dies? Or has that come up yet?

McC: Every Buddy has some support. Each volunteer belongs to a Well-Buddy cell. These are five or six other volunteers with whom you meet every three or four weeks. You support each other, as you're also supporting your Buddies. In a difficult time, such as your Buddy dying, these are the people you turn to. When any person we're involved with dies, all of us feel the loss. We share in the Buddy's grief, as we share in the grief of the family.

Some Buddies get very involved. It's amazing: AIDS is bringing out some of the worst parts of human nature but it's also bringing out

ever ask

you have to do it because you're gay: That's my own view. Being gay, working with someone with AIDS affects you differently. It makes you look at your own life and wonder what's going to happen to you.

McC: It's taken an awfully long time just to get this program structured in CApeople have been arguing that we should start providing services right away, but we realized we coldn't do that.

We waited about two months to get the first training program out of the way. In the meantime, we did provide Buddies for people who were simply desperate and needed them right away. It was like, "Do you think you can handle it?" "Yes." "Alright, go!"

But I think most people need training to have more

MARK LEHMAN

some of the most noble. Some volunteers have gone far out of their way, above and beyond anything we could of anyone. Later you say to them, "God, you gave all that time and energy. They look at you and say, "I did it for Frank, or for Bobby; it was worth it and I'm very glad I did it." And that's very nice to hear.

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Leh: Now that we have the

Buddies trained, we're going to make the Well-Buddy čells a bit more service-oriented. Before this, Well-Buddy cells didn't really know what to do with themselves. They got together regularly and did some structured activities, which were good. Some were more social, which was okay. Now we're planning to select one person in each cell to be group leader or facilitator. He or she will make sure the group talks about social or emotional issues, bringing out problems that exist. We're going to train the group facilitators for that so they can get at the things bothering volunteers most. This will provide stronger and more directed support.

You can get so saturated working with PWAS that it's emotionally draining. But

background about AIDS; about what they're going to be seeing and what the PWA may be experiencing physically. It's also important being able to talk with professionals who have dealt with the psychological problems that PWAS undergo.

If you have a friend with AIDS, to whom you're alredy acting as a Buddy, you could join the Support Committee, and go through the training to learn to be a better Buddy. We're not going to say, dy "You are now ours and decide where you'll go." We aren't autocratic at all.

we

Leh: All the volunteers are going to interact differently. You can't control that at all. We want to give them the same base to work from so they will have something under their belts when going into the room for the first time. Because they'll be frightened: "What do I say? Am I saying the right thing?"

McC: There's also a lot of misinformation out there about AIDS. We try to provide up-to-date, current medical knowledge.

We tried to be very systematic about the training we just finished last month. We did a lot of evaluations.

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They were very positive. I take half a bow for it, because a lot of volunteers thought the material was appropriate, what they felt they needed.

Leh: I'11 give some background about the Support Committee. The Health Issues Taskforce has an Executive Director and three officers: chairman, secretary, and treasurer. The four committees making up the Taskforce are Communications, Education, Fundraising, and Support. Each has a chairman. Besides the officers and the four chairmen, the Taskforce Board (which votes on any official decisions) includes three members-at-large.

The Support Committee began with the others back in 1985, but for some reason couldn't get off the ground. It went through two chairmen but we still weren't sure what was going on. So I took over the position last June. They volunteered or nominated me.

McC: Mark wasn't at that meeting [laughter].

Leh: No, I was there. Because I was a social worker in a hospital, they thought it logical for me to take it on. I thought, "Okay, but only as interim chairman.'

McC: He made that very clear the first day: "I'm the interim chairman. Interim means you don't stay."

Leh: I had been a member-atlarge. The Board said, "It'll just be temporary Mark." After I got into it they said, "Why don't you just stay on and do it?" So I agreed. I wanted to do it.

I wasn't sure the program would work, or how to get it off the ground. But I found a lot of the people involved were tremendously enthusiastic, wanted to give a lot of help, and had good ideas.

First we discussed several areas we thought imporant, which become divisions for the Support Committee to work on.

One is an Intake System: people who go out, take a referral, see a PWA in the hospital, and gather information: whether he wants a Buddy, etc.

Then we have the Buddy System. The Intake worker comes back and matches up the PWA with the list of Buddies who would be appropriate.

We also have a Division Group Counselling. Currently we provide two such groups. One is for HTLV-3 positives. The other is for Significant Others--lovers, family, friends, buddies, whatever. Both groups are free and meet weekly.

We also provide individual counselling for people who want one-on-one sessions with social workers or psychologists. Fortunately, we have people who are providing this counselling free.

[Continued in the November issue.]