POZabilities 2024 Annual Report
Jen Lothridge is a passionate advocate for women’s, minority and HIV research. She works as the Aging and Research supervisor at Christie’s Place. She has now stepped into the board Treasurer role for POZabilities.
2024 was an eventful year for POZabilities!
We continue to grow and expand our reach in the San Diego community and provide social and educational programming to combat stigma, isolation and loneliness in the San Diego HIV community. We remain an all volunteer organization with many of our events and programs led by individual volunteers.
It was also a year of transition. Several of our long time volunteer leaders retired and new leaders have taken the helm.
Jerry Turner, our long time Chairman and Managing Director decided at 80 it was time for him to retire. The board granted him Chairman Emeritus status in order to continue to benefit from his years of experience. Jerry remains an active volunteer but now has the time to focus on his other personal projects.
Kevin Filer, our long time volunteer board member and treasurer also retired this year. His gentle nudging to spend the moneys we raise will be missed. And last but not least Big Ray retired as our long time webmaster. His groundbreaking work established our first real web presence and created the resource pages we use today.
Michael Donovan took the reins as Chairman and Managing Director in February.
Michael and his husband Donald moved back to San Diego in 2018 when he retired from a career in IT consulting. Shortly after settling in he joined the POZabilities family and then the board as education director. He is an energetic volunteer serving the community on the county HIV Planning Group and other volunteer organizations. We look forward to good things with his leadership.
We also were joined by two new board members.
Jason Cuneo is a long time advocate for the LGBTQ and HIV communities in San Diego. He currently manages the Senior Services program at the LGBTQ Community Center.
This year also marked a significant change in the way we have financed our activities. 2023 was the last year that the AIDS Walk and Run was held. As the fundraising surrounding that event was our primary source of revenue we had to embark on an aggressive campaign to raise funds through grants and other events to maintain and grow our programs. We were able to fully fund our expanded NExT nutrition and exercise program as well as do a number of fun and exciting special events and educational programs.
We created a new program funding small startup volunteer groups as programs of POZabilities:
San Diego Hiv Consortium (SDHIVC.org) is a monthly meeting where updated information on HIV research and treatment issues are presented. The group, formed by Dr Joseph Caperna and John Steinmetz provides much of the educational content, along with occasional news Blogs.
Our Town San Diego (OurTownSD.org) was established by Paul Margolis when he and his husband moved to San Diego, based on similar work he did in the San Francisco area. The program provides information on resources and events important to the LGBTQ community and Paul serves as a photographer for many local events.
POZabilities launched HIV Heroes (hiv-heroes.org) a website to serve the San Diego HIV community through storytelling. Whether it’s someone who lost their battle with HIV, someone living with HIV or someone whose efforts on behalf of the community deserve to be remembered, HIV Heros provides a way for the community to tell those stories and have them remembered.
More information on our mission and organization can be found here.
As we enter 2025 we look forward to another fun and productive year. This year represents POZabilities 25th anniversary, so stay tuned for information on how we will celebrate this milestone. We will continue to live and love positively!
