4 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE May 4, 2012 www.GayPeoples Chronicle.com

communitygroups

HIV groups get $300,000 grant

by Roslyn Bucy Miller

Cleveland-A total of $300,000 in grants was awarded last month to local organizations to support their work in preventing HIV and enhancing services for those living with HIV.

Seven organizations will benefit from grants from the AIDS Funding Collaborative to support HIV and AIDS-related services and prevention programming in the Cleveland area. Six of the grants were awarded to agencies that submitted proposals in response to the AFC's annual request for proposals.

Requests were received from 16 agencies for over $550,000 in funding. The priorities for this round of grants are capacity-building projects across systems or within organizations focused on HIV, public policy and advocacy, and seeding new HIV programs in the community. Programs funded under the latter priority will be working with an outside evaluator to assess the progress and community impact of their programs over the course of the grant cycle. This is the first time the AFC has integrated evaluation expertise into its grantmaking.

Grants to three organizations will help support prevention programs for youth at

high risk-e.g., LGBTQ or homeless of acquiring HIV:

• AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland: Peer Leadership Training, $59,400

• Bellefaire JCB: Protect Yourself, $40,447

• LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland: Be Sex Smart, $33,200

Other programs supported by AFC grants include a prevention program for men who solicit, buy, trade or profit from the sale of sex and capacity-building projects for two organizations engaged in HIV prevention and care services.

St. Paul's Community Outreach: Men's Group, $23,234

• Nueva Luz Urban Resource Center, Proyecto Luz Capacity Building, $36,000

• Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland: Ursuline Piazza Capacity Building, $10,766

In addition, the Free Medical Clinic of Cleveland received a targeted grant of $95,000 to support its syringe exchange program, a harm reduction program credited in part with our community's lower-than-average HIV incidence among injection drug users.

milestones

Brian DeWitt and Douglas Braun to wed, after 23 years

"These projects are well-aligned with the AFC's three areas of focus-community impact, integration, and advocacy-as well as the national HIV/AIDS strategy," said AFC chair Shelly Galvin. "We expect that our support of a combination of strategies aimed at a number of different target populations will contribute to other efforts underway to address HIV/AIDS in our community.”

AFC Director Melissa Federman noted, "The addition of an evaluation for the new initiatives will build capacity among agencies in monitoring and evaluating their programs and will help us all to understand what works in HIV prevention in Cleveland and why."

Throughout its nearly 17-year history, the AFC has invested more than $8.5 million to support HIV and AIDS-related services, awareness activities, and prevention efforts in the Cleveland region. The collaborative is located within the offices of the Center for Community Solutions, which provides fiscal and administrative oversight.

Roslyn Bucy Miller is the director of community affairs of the Center for Community Solutions.

GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Publishing the News of Ohio's LGBT Community since 1985 Volume 27, Issue 23 Copyright©2012. All rights reserved. Founded by Charles Callender, 1928-1986 Published by KWIR Publications, Inc. ISSN 1070-177X

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Cleveland Heights-Brian Paul DeWitt and Douglas Allan Braun first met while preparing for a lecture at a Case Western Reserve University gay and lesbian conference in 1987. Neither was the speaker that day. Doug was the sign language interpreter, who needed an adaptor to plug in a light he used. Brian was covering the event for the WRUW-FM's GayWaves program, and he had the adaptor Doug needed.

The pair met again while planning for Cleveland's first Lesbian-Gay Pride festival in 1989. A tour of northeast Ohio to put up posters for the event became their first date, and they have been together ever since.

Now, twenty-three years and one day after that postering run, the couple will marry, on May 12, 2012.

The wedding will take place on Luna Island, next to the American falls in Niagara Falls, New York. The idea came to them last

July, after New York passed a marriage equality law. Brian and Doug attended the first wedding under the new measure, which also took place at Niagara Falls.

The ceremony will be officiated by Andrew Cari of Cleveland Heights, who is a friend of the couple. Rings will be presented by Max Anderson, Doug's grand-nephew, who lives with his parents in Doug's birthplace of Kipton, Ohio. Brian is from Cleveland Heights.

Doug, a social worker for the Benjamin Rose Institute, and Brian, associate editor of the Gay People's Chronicle, will reside in the northern Cleveland Heights home where they have lived for 16 years.

City of Cleveland to honor Calvin 'Kitty' Johnson

Cleveland Calvin "Kitty" Johnson has been told by Ward 16 councilor Jay Westbrook's office that he will receive an award honoring him as the Senior Citizen of the Year for the ward and for the city Department of Aging, at a May 16 ceremony at the Cleveland Convention Center.

Friends kidded him at the April 20 "Breaking the Silence" event that he should receive two awards one should be for his caregiver David. Johnson, who will be 75 on July 1, loves people; and that's the reason he volunteers to help people. Despite being in a wheelchair, he can be found volunteering for Dancin in the Streets, the North Coast Men's Chorus and Basement Beauties. He is coordinator for seniors with tuberculosis or AIDS for the Licenced Practical Nurse Commu-

Brian DeWitt and Douglas Braun

nity Resource Council, and makes phone calls from home for the elections, CLAW, and for Cleveland LGBT Pride.

Other awards which Johnson has received include the M.E. Geaso Award from Mt Sinai Hospital, the Tremont Care Center Award from Carnegie Care, and the 2006 Excellence in Nursing from the Cleveland Council of Black Registered Nurses which was also signed by the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones. He was honored for community education on TB and HIV by the AIDS Taskforce; and also for voter registration.

Johnson was the eldest of seven children born and raised in La Grange, Georgia. He came to Cleveland and became an LPN at Mt Sinai in 1971. His siblings now live in Wisconsin.

Calvin "Kitty" Johnson

JIM GREENFIELD

P.O. Box 391464 Cleveland, Ohio 44139 440-986-0051

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