Graduates will become community leaders helping others navigate systemic inequities and achieve health and well-being
Photos from the moving ceremony here (Photo credit: David Nager/Alliance)
For three decades, Alliance for Positive Change has provided New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic conditions with leadership and economic mobility opportunities through its renowned Peer training program.
On Monday, November 28th, Alliance celebrated the success of its 59th graduating class of the Peer Recovery Education Program (PREP) at a ceremony with graduates and special guests at The Door, its second consecutive graduation held there.
Alliance’s Peer Recovery Education Program (PREP) is a 6-week intensive capacity-building skills training program that harnesses the power of Peer mentoring to help others initiate and maintain healthy behaviors. PREP Cycle 59 participants received information on HIV, hepatitis C, STIs, harm reduction, outreach skills, overdose prevention, and more.
"My journey has been hard; I am a transwoman of color from Guyana. When I attended PREP Cycle 59, it was the first time I was given the chance to be myself. This experience has been life-changing for me [and] inspired me so much that I have decided to pursue the goal of becoming a social worker,” said Peer graduate Rare-Pearl in her address to her classmates at the ceremony. “Alliance helped me to set that goal, and I will work very hard to achieve it. I am no longer Rare-Pearl, the outcast, the shunned, the unworthy. I am a person who loves herself and is ready to reach back and help others come out of the darkness."
Peer graduates become community leaders who use their lived experience and training to help fellow New Yorkers facing health challenges. Since the first class in 1992, Alliance has graduated more than 1,500 people from its renowned Peer program.
During their training, Peers develop skills to coach and support New Yorkers to overcome health challenges, navigate systemic inequities, and achieve health and well-being. The Peer program connects low-income people to care and support, reduces the burden on under-resourced healthcare institutions, and creates more economic mobility for people who need it most. Each year, these community ambassadors connect with approximately 15,000 New Yorkers.
Funding for the Alliance Peer Recovery Education Program (PREP) is made possible through the generous support of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute.
About Alliance for Positive Change
Alliance for Positive Change is a leading multiservice organization that provides low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic conditions with access to quality health
care, housing, harm reduction, coaching, and our renowned peer training and job placement program that cultivates leadership and economic mobility. Alliance opened in 1991, at the height of the HIV crisis—a welcoming community of transformation and opportunity. Today, we deliver on the promise of positive change with services and resources that equip people to navigate systemic inequities and achieve health and well-being. Learn about all the ways we inspire positive change at www.alliance.nyc.
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