VeNews December 2008

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Youth Master Plan Fosters Asset Development

Led by its recreation manager, Denis Nishihara, the City of Oakley, California, is bringing together its young people, parents, schools, businesses, faith communities, nonprofits, sports leagues, and others to ensure middle- and high-schoolers have every chance to develop the traits essential for successful living. With Vesper Society funding, Oakley is creating a Youth Master Plan of services and programs that build ethical character and a sense of belonging, competency, and worth.

The plan sets specific goals incorporating Search Institute’s, 40 Developmental Assets, which provide a research-based foundation for youth development. These goals include encouraging civic participation, building youth/business partnerships, supporting young people’s artistic endeavors, and providing inclusive recreational opportunities.

The effort is an ambitious one for a city that was incorporated only ten years ago, and Nishihara feels it is important to begin as they aim to finish. He expects the City Council to adopt the plan in April and to assess progress yearly. A team of business, youth, church, and school officials will oversee implementation. “We’re connecting agencies—neighbors with businesses, businesses with churches, churches with the city, the city with the schools,” he says. “We’ve always felt the connection, but [the plan] makes you see it.”

All stakeholders will have input on the master plan. That approach, and Vesper Society-funded participation of city and school officials in Search’s Healthy Communities/Healthy Youth conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in November, has created “a large ball of energy,” Nishihara says. “We have two City Council members enthralled, and the Chief of Police loves the idea. And even in these hard economic times, [city leaders] said, ‘Let’s get the information from Search and get it to our schools.’” 

The master plan is the culmination of the Society’s Oakley Youth Empowerment Program.
For more information about the project, contact .

 

Masangane HIV/AIDS Program Expands to Second Site

HIV-positive residents of the Eastern Cape of South Africa face stigma and difficulties receiving life-saving drugs. Since 2002, the Vesper-funded Masangane Treatment Program has provided support, education, and anti-retroviral treatment there. Recently, the project greatly expanded its capacity by increasing its staff and opening a counseling and testing site in a nearby rural community.

“Masangane means ‘embrace,’” explains Vesper Society president Mary Baich. “When clients come in, they are literally embraced.” The new location runs monthly, one-day community workshops to educate clients about the treatment protocol. Care workers visit each client at home to make sure he or she has a clock, access to water, and both a family member and a volunteer who will support treatment.

Because it can handle people who are more acutely ill, and because it can provide medications more quickly than the state program, the Masangane program saves lives every day. Counseling and peer support help keep the dropout rate very low and the success rate high. Stable clients are transferred to the state hospital, where treatment is free, to open some of the 60 Masangane slots to serve additional clients.

In 2007, Masangane moved 30 people into the state program; in the first six months of 2008 alone, it transferred 37. The vast majority of this year’s clients report increased hope and decreased stigma. The project’s mortality rate is remarkably low.   

“We lost only three patients this year, which is significant,” Baich says. And the waiting list—a marker of community acceptance of the project—has grown significantly. A new Society-provided building will allow testing and counseling to continue in greater privacy.

For more information about the project, contact .

 

Vesper Society Supports Families, Health, Spirit, and Song

This year, Vesper Society also provided support to the 2008 World Festival of Sacred Music –Los Angeles, a nationally recognized, community-based festival that recognizes music as an expression of humanity’s most profound aspirations; Health Ministries Association Regional Conference, held in Southern California, which brought together people of faith who promote whole-person health in the communities they serve; Dodoma Tanzania Health Development, which provides accessible, sustainable health care to poor residents of Central Tanzania; and Operation Access, a network of medical volunteers and hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area that donates surgeries to low-income, uninsured patients.

 

Looking Ahead

The January 2009 edition of VeNews will include a preview of the year ahead and an update on Vesper Society’s new book about British lay leader Mark Gibbs and the ministry in daily life movement.

VeNews informs readers of Vesper Society programs and activities. We welcome your feedback at . If you would like to add your name to our email list, please click here.

Vesper Society, a private operating foundation, promotes social justice locally and globally by addressing critical social issues including the provision of health services for the underserved.