We hope you are well and cooling off after a very hot summer! Thank you for your support that allows us to continue to provide services to people living with HIV. Here are some community events and news you might be interested in: Pride events, social gatherings, fundraising events, volunteer opportunities, highlighting community champions, and more. Thank you — we’re grateful for the difference that you and your support make in the lives of people we serve as well as in creating a more inclusive and welcoming community.
Scott Blades
Executive Director
Quick Links to This Month’s Articles
- Dining with Friends Events – You Are Invited to Participate!
- TIHAN Pilots a New Social Program to Address Isolation and Increase Social Support
- TIHAN Receives Grant from Arizona Bowl for CarePackage Support
- Volunteer Opportunities Abound – Sign Up for A Volunteer Orientation
- El Tour de Tucson Riders Raise Funds for TIHAN!
- TIHAN Participates in Tucson’s Pride Festival and Parade – Join Us!
- $25 Could Win You a New Car, Round-Trip Tickets Anywhere, or $5,000 Cash!
- Register to Vote (or Update Your Voting Information) – Your Voice Matters!
- TIHAN’s Staff is Growing!
Dining with Friends Events – You Are Invited to Participate!
We are inviting you to join in our Dining with Friends benefit by hosting a dinner party (or lunch, brunch or cocktail party) for your friends. Gather your friends together to share good food and drink, encouraging attendees to make a donation to TIHAN. You can make your event as informal or formal as you’d like – it’s all up to you.
Jill and Jim and Melinda, George and Rick, Dan and Caroline, Scott and Jess, Tom and Cheryl, Nancy and Susan, Mitch and Mike, Carol and Rod, and more folks are organizing their own gathering, ranging from 5 people to 80 people, to enjoy food and drink and community and offering people an opportunity to contribute to TIHAN.
Whether it’s a dinner in their home, or a brunch at a restaurant, a BBQ in the back yard, an open house with snacks, or a wine tasting, TIHAN supporters are planning events for friends, and we hope you will join us! For more information or to sign up to host a gathering for TIHAN, contact Scott Blades at scott@tihan.org
TIHAN Pilots a New Social Program to Address Isolation and Increase Social Support
Thanks to a $4,000 grant from Aunt Rita’s Foundation, TIHAN is piloting a new social program for people living with HIV. Positive Experiences is a once-a-month social event for a limited number of people living with HIV, especially people over the age of 50. The event is free, and transportation is provided. This month, we’re having a dinner at an awesome local restaurant. Future months may include such activities as museum trip, movie/play, zoo or botanical gardens, game night, painting party, and more. If our first few months get a good response, we’ll seek funding to establish this program for 2024 as we seek to decrease isolation and increase opportunities for socialization and peer support.
If you are living with HIV and interested in applying to attend (we’ll be drawing the names of those selected each month), please contact us at 520-299-6647 ext 205 or LinkVolunteer@tihan.org
TIHAN Receives Grant from Arizona Bowl for CarePackage Support
TIHAN is grateful to have been selected as one of 10 local nonprofits to receive a grant from the Arizona Bowl. The Board of Directors of the bowl presented the check to TIHAN Board President Leslie Kahn and Scott Blades. We received $3,500 in support of our CarePackage program that provides essential toiletry items to people living with HIV—items such as toilet paper, soap, shampoo, deodorant, dental hygiene items, and more. Since most of our CarePartners (clients) live below the poverty line on limited disability income, these items (which cannot be purchased using SNAP benefits—formerly known as food stamps) are important to maintain health and hygiene. The Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl, held annually at Arizona Stadium, is the only bowl game that donates 100% of the net proceeds to charities! If you’d like to support the bowl and its impact on our community, the bowl’s kickoff luncheon takes place on Oct 12 from 11:30am-1:00pm at TCC, with featured guest Tedy Bruschi, UA and NFL star, and this year’s award recipients The Flores Family of Si Charro! fame. And save the date for this year’s bowl game: Saturday, December 30, at 2:30pm!
Volunteer Opportunities Abound – Sign Up for A Volunteer Orientation
Join us for our next Volunteer Orientation on Saturday, October 21! We have volunteer opportunities for administrative support, as well as direct client (CarePartner) support roles.
Take a look at our current volunteer opportunities (which you can find at tihan.org, then click on “Volunteer” and “Volunteer Opportunities), and reach out to sign up by contacting us at 520-299-6647 or VolunteerCoordinator@tihan.org
El Tour de Tucson Riders Raise Funds for TIHAN!
We’re looking forward to our world-famous El Tour de Tucson ride in November–with routes ranging from 102 miles, 63 miles, 32 miles, 10 miles, 5 miles, all the way down to 1 mile.
If you’d like to support one of the riders participating and raising funds for TIHAN, visit https://www.pledgereg.com/tucson-interfaith-hivaids-network-tihan. For more information about El Tour, visit https://eltourdetucson.org/
TIHAN Participates in Tucson’s Pride Festival and Parade – Join Us!
Tucson’s Pride celebration takes place on Saturday, September 30, at Reid Park, where the Festival will start at Noon. With thousands of people expected to attend, Tucson Pride will feature a variety of businesses and nonprofit organizations sharing information, including TIHAN. The Pride Parade takes place downtown near Armory Park the night before, Friday, September 29, starting at 7:30pm. It’s important to us to be visible in the community that we serve and show our support.
If you’d like to volunteer to help staff TIHAN’s information table at the event (for a 2-hour shift) or participate in TIHAN’s walking contingent in the Pride Parade, contact us at OperationsManager@tihan.org or 520-299-6647. For details about Tucson Pride, visit www.TucsonPride.org
$25 Could Win You a New Car, Round-Trip Tickets Anywhere, or $5,000 Cash!
TIHAN is one of the nonprofits participating in this year’s Millions for Tucson raffle. Grand prize: 2023 Ford Bronco Raptor. 2nd Prize: Two roundtrip first-class airline tickets to anywhere in the world. 3rd Prize: $5,000 cash!
100% of proceeds from our ticket sales will benefit TIHAN’s programs and services for people living with HIV. Purchase your raffle ticket(s) for $25 each. A maximum of 100,000 tickets can be sold, so your odds are much better than the lottery.
Tickets are available through December 8, 2023 and a public drawing will be held on December 14, 2023. You must be 21 years of age to purchase. You do NOT have to be present to win. Purchase tickets at https://tihan.ejoinme.org/win, or you can get them from the TIHAN office (520-299-6647).
Register to Vote (or Update Your Voting Information) – Your Voice Matters!
If you are a US citizen living in Arizona and want to register to vote, need to change your address on your voter registration, or want to sign up to vote by mail (by being on the Permanent Early Voting List or PEVL), you can do it online via this website from the state of Arizona (in both English and Spanish).
You can also check your current voter registration info and your polling place too.
If you want to be one of the 80% of Arizona voters who are signed up for early voting by mail, you will receive your ballot in the mail a few weeks before Election Day, and then you send it back in a prepaid envelope. No need to travel to your polling place on Election Day.
Here’s the site with all the info: https://servicearizona.com/VoterRegistration
TIHAN’s Staff is Growing!
We’re excited to welcome Heaven Rendon and Gina Snyder to our staff team, and we’ll soon be recruiting another member to supplement our team of volunteers supporting our CarePartners living with HIV. Shown here on a “Casual Friday” with a hat theme, we’re grateful for our staff working hard to support our community!
