AEGiS-PRn: The Healthy Living Project Sponsors HIV/AIDS Workshop on World AIDS Day: The Healthy Living Project, MCC's MOMobile Program, Women's Christian Alliance, and HOPE Worldwide Are Working Together to Educate Philadelphia Neighborhoods About HIV/AIDS

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The Healthy Living Project Sponsors HIV/AIDS Workshop on World AIDS Day: The Healthy Living Project, MCC's MOMobile Program, Women's Christian Alliance, and HOPE Worldwide Are Working Together to Educate Philadelphia Neighborhoods About HIV/AIDS

PRNewswire - November 29, 2000

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The workshop will be held at Women's Christian Alliance (WCA), in the main auditorium of the Community Family Center at 1610 N. Broad St., from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on December 1, 2000. Lunch and childcare will be provided to those attending. From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., Hope worldwide will be providing free and confidential HIV/AIDS counseling and testing, and MCC's MOMobile Advocates and the WCA HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit will be conducting street outreach, distributing literature and condoms, and encouraging people to take advantage of the HIV/AIDS counseling and testing.

The Healthy Living Project, a model collaboration between WCA and MCC, is funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and directly addresses the HIV/AIDS crisis in Strawberry Mansion, North and West Philadelphia neighborhoods. Approximately 75% of women with HIV/AIDS in Philadelphia are African American. The program uses a comprehensive and holistic approach that is part of a national and local effort designed to reduce the risk of HIV/AIDS infection for people who are particularly vulnerable to the epidemic and focuses on African-American pregnant/newly parenting women and adolescents.

These women face serious and diverse socioeconomic issues and have a critical need for HIV/AIDS prevention education and information, access and resources. The Healthy Living Project empowers women to make healthy choices.

Women's Christian Alliance (WCA) is one of the oldest non-profit children and family service agencies in Philadelphia. Its mission is to provide services that are family-centered, child-focused, culturally sensitive and community-based; to engage in activities that promote and ensure stability and integrity of families and to support and facilitate permanence for children.

"The board and staff of WCA feels their involvement with The Healthy Living Project is contributing in a major way to the general health of the community we serve," said Marilyn Rivers, executive director of WCA.

Maternity Care Coalition (MCC) and its signature program, the MOMobile, have served more than 38,000 families, over the past decade, in neighborhoods known to have high rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, poverty and child abuse. The mission of MCC is to improve maternal and child health and well being through the collaborative efforts of individuals, families, providers and communities. MCC and the MOMobile work to connect pregnant women and their families to prenatal, well baby, and other needed services, and empower pregnant women to make the healthiest choices possible for their babies and themselves.

HOPE worldwide is a non-profit charity, headquartered in Philadelphia. HOPE worldwide's mission is to bring hope to a hurting world. It began in 1991 with three simple programs and now serves the poor in 75 nations on all six inhabited continents. With over 100,000 committed volunteers, HOPE worldwide annually serves more than two million needy people.

SOURCE Maternity Care Coalition Web Site: http://www.momobile.org

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