Our Results to Date

The Foundation serves the Service Planning Area 8 (SPA 8) of the County of Los Angeles, State of California, which consist of 15 cities of the county to include: Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, Carson, Lennox, Lomita, Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills, Rancho Palos Verdes, Long Beach and the City of Los Angeles (San Pedro, Wilmington and Harbor City).  SPA 8 has the second highest incidence rate of HIV in the State of California and is double the rate of all of Los Angeles County.

    The total population of SPA 8 is 1,545,275 which comprise: Black or African American 14.6%, American Indian 0.3%, Asian/Pacific Islander 14.0%, Latino or Hispanic 37.7%, White 30.9% and Other/Multi-racial 2.5%.  The average age range of all classes is as follows: 0-17 years 26.9%, 18-64 years 62.9% and 65 years and over 10.2%.  Percentages of households that are non-English speaking are 29.4% Spanish, 10.5% Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3.9% European/Other.

    The Long Beach AIDS Foundation has directly provided general outreach & prevention services to 1776 clients, and indirect outreach & prevention, testing, care, and treatment education to approximately 4,518 clients through our partner organizations for fiscal year 2007-2008. ¹

1. LA County Prevention Plan 2009 - 2013

Our Capacity

    Since our inception in 2005, the Foundation has served as a prevention and education, outreach and awareness incubator to the greater diverse Long Beach community. This community includes: gays, lesbian, bisexuals, transgendered, questioning, inter-sexed and heterosexuals individuals from various socio-economic backgrounds. Through our public education programs we strive to promote and generate positive awareness to eliminate discrimination of all types.

    These public education and outreach programs includes:

Project: Red Paint is an HIV Awareness Art Competition, creating awareness through art, dialogue and education. The public and students are encouraged to use any form of research to inspire and create art that forms critical thinking on the prevention of HIV and AIDS. (www.aidsprojectlb.org).  In 2009, the program received over 80 entries from community youth between the ages of 14 to 18, finalists were selected by the public and an Art Jury Panel and their work was displayed at the World AIDS Day program. The program which reaches over 2000 people in the Long Beach/LA Unified School Districts, City of Long Beach, Long Beach Arts Council and the general public at large to provide an understanding of the cultural diversity of our city.

Our SpotU web portal program, has aired 34 interactive web shows of “The Tenacity of Teens” with a heterosexual and GLBTQ youth cast.  These shows have discussed a wide range of youth topics to 1,020  viewers and participants around the world, and connected 6,375 viewers to our educational outreach channels on YouTube. It is developed by youth, written and directed by the youth participants. Previous shows have included human sexuality, religion, peer influence, relationships, discrimination, alcohol & drugs and HIV/AIDS. The SpotU program discusses issues which ask youth to: Get the Facts, Get Tested and Volunteer.  SpotU utilizes social networks, blogs, webcasting and other new technologies that enable youth and adolescents to connect with their peers on a local, national and international level.

Since 1988, our AIDS Walk Long Beach (AWLB) annual walk-a-thon HIV/AIDS event reaches people throughout Southern California.  Unlike traditional walkathons which are primarily used as fundraisers for organizations, AWLB is a vehicle to partner with local groups and organizations to continue our outreach and prevention services through testing, treatment education, and linkage to healthcare providers. Walk Day proceeds are awarded to collaborating HIV/AIDS Service Providers and organizations.

World AIDS Day Public Educational Event, we were able to mobilize 1,747 community members to actively take part to bring awareness and to make a commitment to end discrimination of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability of youth, adolescents and adults of all ages. Our World AIDS Day  event is a community health education expo that provides outreach awareness to approximately 500 people of all ethnic backgrounds.  The W.A.D. program capitalizes on outreaching to the multi-cultural and diverse communities of Long Beach to include three key populations: Middle and High School students, At-risk/High-risk communities and the general population. A community Resource Guide is provided free to all program attendees. (www.lbaidsfoundation.org/resources.htm)

Through our AIDS Life Emergency Fund (ALEF) the Foundation has been able to build a coalition with AIDS Service, Community Based and grass-root organizations to continually provide direct program services to people of all color who have been infected and affected by HIV and other chronic illnesses.  To date this coalition has directly assisted 15 individuals who have experienced extreme poverty and medical setbacks between the ages of 20 and 65.

Play Fair, is a direct HIV outreach campaign in collaboration with the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI) to provide “guerilla style marketing” in prevention, personal stories, by creating a collectible desire to acquire the next campaign release of the “baseball style” card.  The popularity and success of unique the program has spawn other chapters of the SPI across the nations to emulate the same program.

    The Long Beach AIDS Foundation realizes the need to continually address discrimination of all forms through our program, services and collaborations and therefore we must maintain culturally-based training to further allow the organization to eliminate discrimination within the Long Beach community.  Even though we have made strong strides towards our achievement we must continue to provide and engage in training of our volunteers, staff and partners to ensure achievement of our overall goals.

    Our capacity to address discrimination of all forms including homophobia, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability has been demonstrated through our unique program models which have consistently and continually met the needs of our diverse service community.  However, we realize to continue to meet the needs of our ever changing demographics we must actively seek and build relationships and partnerships with not only local, but national organizations that can provide the technical assistance and training to the organization.

Let's Make Change Happen!