Board of Directors President's Report

Fiscal 2010/2011

Fifteen Years and Counting

Michael has offered a glimpse of the beginning and early years of VARCS, the Victoria AIDS Respite Care Society. I would like to combine two things in my president's comments: my perspective on the year past and a continuation of the history of VARCS as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.

I'll start with where I came into the picture some fifteen years ago. My wife was asked by a colleague to meet with Gary Murphy, the founder and then executive director of VARCS, concerning a project he was developing. Nancy was impressed. Here was this handsome, articulate man with a vision of a program that recognized the changing face of HIV/AIDS and who needed some help with a proposal.

The proposal was for a program called Positively Fit. It was sponsored by Health Canada and responded to the arrival of anti- retroviral drugs, the first drugs that offered any real hope for those infected with HIV. The program looked at the new reality of AIDS. People weren't just going to progressively worsen and die; there was hope for the future. And with that hope, people needed to consider a future. One of those responses was physical fitness and that was what the Positively Fit program was about.

Knowing nothing about HIV/AIDS, I was intrigued. A turning point like PosFit, as it came to be known, deserved documentation. I met with Gary and we added an application for funds for a film to the mix and received funds from Health Canada to do it. That's what got me involved.

PosFit was one of the most successful projects ever undertaken in the AIDS community in Victoria. People who never before or since had anything to do with VARCS, VIPWAS or AVI came out and joined in. It was an exciting thing to be part of.

As I, camera in hand, enthusiastically joined in the many events, Gary soon asked me to join VARCS board.

There was a lot going on about that time. The changes in the AIDS community, some of them resulting from the anti- retrovirals and protease inhibitors, were challenging to all of the AIDS organizations and soon became political. There was some ugly infighting among the AIDS organizations.

Sadly, one of the outcomes of those difficulties was that Gary, the visionary who had led the way in founding VARCS, was asked to step down as executive director by a shaken board. Not long after, most of the board's senior members resigned leaving me, a junior member, to assume the chairmanship or, perhaps more accurately given the infighting and squabbling among the agencies, holding the bag.

We re-assembled a board and, with generous assistance from people like the late Mike Gidora, Irene Haigh-Gidora and Marianne Alto, we held ourselves together and got through. (For those of you who have come to the community in more recent times, Mike Place, a housing component of the Victoria Cool Aids Society, is named after Mike, who sadly died suddenly a few years ago.)

I won't dwell further on those sometimes-ugly times. Suffice to say, they were difficult but, more importantly, they are long behind us as the AIDS organizations defined their roles in the community and the turf wars eased. Michael Yoder took over as executive director of VARCS and carried on with Gary's vision. The last 10 years have seen continuing change. The arrival of the Liberal government brought changes to the province's health authorities and changes to the way our funding was given. It took a long time for VIHA to sort out exactly how to do that and led to some frustrations but we should remember that the needs of an organization receiving $100,000 or so in funds might just have to take a back seat in the priorities line to multi-million dollar hospital renovations, the Vancouver Island cancer clinic and other such priorities.

The biggest change we have had to deal with is in the population we serve. When I first became involved with VARCS, AIDS was "the gay disease" and just about everyone we served was a gay male. Since that time, HIV/AIDS has spread into the street community and the intravenous drug using community.

VARCS' original mandate, respite care, became less of an issue and more of a challenge. The advent of new drugs and better health among the HIV/AIDS community meant less demand for respite care. The change in the population offered challenges to respite care: some of the street and IDU people couldn't resist the temptation to steal from the homes of their respite care providers. The homeowners were not amused.

Programs changed and our name changed with them. VARCS is now the Victoria AIDS Resource &Community Service Society. Where before VARCS dealt with men's wellness and respite care, harm reduction and the provision of harm reduction materials, needles and clean supplies, became more prominent to the point where they are the principal programs we provide today.

Five years ago Michael stepped down as E.D. and Karen Dennis was offered the job. Karen proved to be a dynamo and helped us adapt to changing times. She soon brought Barb Cavill to VARCS and Barb quickly proved herself to be a caring, compassionate and active worker. In other words, exactly the right person for the job. Karen and Barb have both honoured the vision of the past and continued innovations for the future. One of the more recent innovations has been the Access Worker position. Coupled with the Mobile X, our ageing van that quietly plies the streets of Victoria and surrounding communities to offer clean needles and rigs, our Access Worker program now actively brings people together with services. If someone wants to get clean, we have the right contacts to help him or her. Someone has a health emergency, our staff are there to get them to the hospital.

Coming to the last year, I'm especially pleased that we have, after many years and with the support of friends at VIHA, been able to stabilize that program by gaining funding for a second position on the Mobile X. We had struggled along with interim grants and several good people have spent time at VARCS before finding more stable employment. Happily, Brittney Johnstone was holding that temporary position when we finally got that funding and is now the third full-time member of our staff. Again, we are extremely fortunate that the right person was there at the time.

Finally, our board has also faced a challenge this year, one that was perhaps overdue. At the impetus of Board Member Neil Belanger, who unfortunately for us has had to step down to deal with a Masters' degree program, two small children and his mother's illness, we took a look at our policies and procedures manual and our by-laws. We have up-dated them, a task that took a long and frustrating amount of time.

So, as we enter the third decade of VARCS' existence, we are up to date, decently funded (there's always more we could do if we had more funding) and, with the fine staff we are lucky to have, ready to face whatever new challenges come our way. And we know they will come: just one example and I'll end, those anti-retroviral drugs that first came along when I got involved with VARCS, and the newer protease inhibitor drugs that have arrived since, have saved lives for many years. Now people with HIV/AIDS are ageing and facing their senior years while dealing with the disease. No one has ever been in that position before in the history of civilization;. We'll need to learn what is appropriate to service their needs. And there will be more changes to come.

Sincerely
Arthur Holbrook
VARCS Board of Directors President