FOOD VOUCHER DISTRIBUTION AND
CLIENT ELIGIBILITY
Any one-year resident of Riverside County’s Coachella Valley with an annual income of less than $16,269 (170% of the National Poverty Level for an individual) and has been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS is qualified to receive AIDS Assistance Program food vouchers. Dependent children are also eligible for dollar amounts equal to those received by their parents. Currently, the AIDS Assistance Program distributes food vouchers — redeemable at local area Stater Brothers Supermarkets — to 450 clients at a cost in excess of $43,000.00 per month.

BENEFITS COUNSELING
The AIDS Assistance Program was established in 1991 to provide some comfort and support to persons with AIDS  who were ill and dying. Although there is yet no cure — nor is there a vaccine to assure prevention — recent medical advancements have immeasurably extended life spans of those who have been diagnosed. Therefore, the organization is now charged to provide comfort and support in ways to improve the quality of the lives of those surviving HIV/AIDS.

AAP's successful fundraising efforts, in concert with the overwhelming generosity of its donors, has led its Board of Directors to approve the expansion of services beyond the distribution of food vouchers. The inclusion of criteria instrumental to the individual cultivating a renewed sense of confidence, strength and ability was mandatory.

Many of AAP’s clients have expressed a desire to re-enter (or, for that matter, enter for the first time) the work place. Most, if not all, however, are justifiably afraid of jeopardizing the medical and financial benefits that continue to serve them so well. In response, the  AIDS Assistance Program secured a grant designed specifically to fund the development and implementation of its Benefits Counseling Service.

Providing our client base with accurate and useful information will, in a relatively short period of time, diminish the ranks of those we serve with food vouchers not by attrition as a result of death, but by attrition as a result of the renewal of a productive and rewarding life. The success we achieve here will allow us to provide to many more the nutritional assistance as well as the information required to become as wholly self-sufficient as possible. That is our goal.

Please click on the links to the left to find out more about The AIDS Assistance Program and its Benefits Counseling Service.

If you would like to arrange an appointment with our volunteer benefits counselors, please call our office during normal business hours or email us at:

aidsassistance@aidsassistance.org