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Winter 2017 Newsletter
Holiday Cheer

On the evening of December 17, Ursuline Piazza hosted our annual holiday party at St. Augustine Manor. It was a lot of fun! With over 40 clients in attendance, we celebrated with good food, a hilarious puppet show, and some boot stomping line-dancing.

We were able to pay for the dinner with a grant procured by former AIDS United/AFC AmeriCorps member, now Metro employee Josh Kratz. He saw the grant application for assistance with holiday parties and thought of Ursuline Piazza! Josh also volunteered as the bartender for the event, pouring pop or water for the attendees. 

Also, due to the generous donations made by UP supporters throughout the year, we were able to pass out bags full to the brim of much needed toiletries and cleaning supplies.

Thank you to all of our volunteers and donors who made this event possible!
Moving into the New Year

We started off 2017 with a flurry of need for our Housed UP program. One client who recently moved out of a nursing facility called us and said he was spending all of his time in the bathroom because it was the only place he had to sit down. Using Housed UP funds, we provided him with a new bed and through various donations, a complete living/dining room set: arm chairs, couch, end table, lamp, and kitchen table with chairs. When we had it all set up and plugged in the lamp, it looked like home. 
International Visitors at the Piazza

Ursuline Piazza was contacted by the Cleveland Council on World Affairs to host a group of HIV advocates from Russia. The group is made up of six visitors and two State Department-contracted Russian interpreters. They are part of the International Visitor Leadership Program, which sees 300 visitors coming to Cleveland and 5,000 coming to the United States each year. 

While here, the State Department was very interested in having them visit Ursuline Piazza to learn about best practices for targeted treatment of HIV-positive adults who are low-income, chemically dependent, minority, from emerging sub-populations, and suffering mental health issues.
We met on Monday, February 6. After listening to stories about the challenges and successes of Ursuline Piazza. It was heart-wrenching to hear about their struggles with HIV in Russia. HIV has been classified as an epidemic in many regions with the percent of a population living with HIV of over 1%. Yet, because of government control and very low budgets, it is hard for them to get medications and when they do, the medications are out-dated with many side-effects. One HIV+ advocate shared that she wasn't able to receive medication until she also had tuberculosis as an opportunistic infection and lost one of her lungs. 

We asked what Ursuline Piazza could do to help them. We were told that pill-boxes assist so much with adherence, but are hard to come by in Russia. Ursuline Piazza happily shared their supply and agreed to Skype with our newfound friends in the future.
Do you shop using Amazon? If you do, we hope that you will use AmazonSmile. When you make a purchase using AmazonSmile, 0.5% of the purchase price is donated to Ursuline Piazza. Use this handy link the next time that you shop:
https://smile.amazon.com/ch/37-1655740
Copyright © 2017 Ursuline Piazza, All rights reserved.


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