News-Letter

There is a student group on this campus with absolutely no structure. This rogue organization has no director, no agenda, no competitions to win, no views to push. They simply want to make life a little bit richer, and every time they get together something new happens. They are the AIDS Buddies, and their gift is their time.

For the past two years, every evening from Tuesday through Friday at 5 o'clock, four- or five-person sections of this group of 16 student volunteers pile into a navy blue Hopkins van and drive north to the Dawn Miller House on Charter Oak Road. The Dawn Miller House is a hospice for patients in advanced stages of AIDS. But once the volunteers get there, what they choose to do with the residents is up to them. The activities run the range from movie nights to game nights, birthday celebrations, holiday parties, eating out at restaurants and even trips to the zoo. But mostly they go to make new friends.

Program co-coordinator, Jonathan Yao '03 bakes pies and cheesecake for the residents every week. According to Yao, the group is what each student makes of it.

"We are unique because our time with the residents is so open ended. What we do is simply bring a part of our lives to them. The group really promotes individuality."

And not just individuality for the volunteers. Hospice residents are housed and fed, provided with medication, and assisted in terms of their mobility. They hail from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds but all of them are there through a rigorous application process.

The services they are provided with are all vitally important, but arguably, the service that the AIDS Buddies provides is the most valuable. Although they are being cared for materially, there is not always a great deal of emotional attention given to such patients. In being thus neglected, they are often made to feel like victims of society.

AIDS Buddies aims to bring them back into the fold of the community. Through the Buddies' time and attention, hospice residents become individual people with unique interests instead of a faceless demographic statistic.

They are opera singers, churchgoers, people with master's degrees, wives, children and hobbies like collecting teddy bears. Yao emphasizes that the patients are always happy to see the Hopkins students arrive.

"It is the complete opposite of the stereotypical clinic where patients are immobilized, bitter and depressed. These people realize that they have been given a special chance. They are happy to wake up every morning, and they think more about living than dying."

And that, in the end is what the Buddies do; they embrace life.

All are always welcome just to go for a visit. They'll be on the steps of Levering every night at 5 o'clock and can always make room for one more. Contact Jonathan Yao jyao2@jhu.edu for more information.

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