Trinity House CLT – Grant Awardee
In November 2016, the North Carolina Community AIDS Fund (NCCAF) granted $2,500 to support the Trinity House CLT’s Mind, Body & Spirit Program. Trinity House CLT is a community-based organization that was established in 2014 in Charlotte, NC. Its mission is to provide HIV preventive education; to offer compassionate support for those diagnosed and impacted by HIV, whose voices remain unheard and to provide services to the population most at risk of acquiring the virus; creating an environment that embraces the whole individual without judgment and with full acceptance.
Trinity House CLT has a history of providing training and education and outreach in the local community. In the last three years and originally as an unincorporated group of concerned citizens, the organization coordinated the recruitment, implementation and facilitation of training for forty (40) African-American/African faith-based organizations located in neighborhoods most disproportionately impacted by health disparities, including HIV/AIDS. During this period, sixty-five (65) clergy, pastors and other faith and lay leaders were trained as “Lifestyle Ambassadors” to provide leadership, guidance and training to their respective churches around HIV/AIDS prevention education and testing. In addition to this, Trinity House CLT has expanded its services to include town hall meetings, monthly group meetings and a congregational membership program. This expansion provided an introduction to the Mind, Body, Spirit (MBS) Program to provide leadership development and increase education in the local community.
The primary purpose of the MBS program is to address the optimal health outcomes utilizing the role of faith leaders in the community in changing the course of the epidemic in the fight against HIV and to empower congregations with the knowledge and support about HIV/AIDS. Increased HIV prevention and treatment efforts need to slow and reverse AIDS epidemic with confidential testing to decrease infection rates in the community. The Faith Program will focus on providing leadership on solutions to the faith community by advocating and empowering congregations to become effective voices advocating for HIV/AIDS. The CDC Intervention “SISTA” used for the Trinity Project in 2010 will continue to be the model for this Faith Program.