History of Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project

During the 1989-90 Rotary year, Los Altos Rotary initiated a project to increase awareness of the threat that AIDS poses to the world population. As the project developed, a goal emerged to produce a videotape to educate fellow Rotarians about the severity and urgency of the AIDS epidemic. A budget of $75,000 was established and raised. To assure tax deductibility, the project was incorporated under the name, “Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project” (LARAP). Currently, the LARAP Board is independent, operating as a California non-profit corporation. The long-term hope is for each Rotary Club to support the project as well as to initiate action in its respective community and country to combat AIDS and comfort its victims. And, that’s exactly what happened.

The videotape The Los Altos Story was produced in that first year with the talented help and vision of television personality Robin Young who became personally committed to the telling of the story. It is an incredibly moving, compelling documentary of how HIV/AIDS has impacted lives of three Rotarians and their families. The project attracted the attention of the top levels of Rotary International and has gained their interest and support.

In the second year of our project, the video was shown to as many Rotary Clubs and other organizations and concerned individuals as possible. Funds were raised and used to send a copy of the video to every Rotary Club in the U.S. and Canada. Two showings of the story on nationwide TV earned the Story an Ace Award and a Peabody Award for excellence in documentary video. The greatest accomplishment of the whole project is shown by the hundreds of phone calls and letters received from viewers of the Los Altos Story, telling how their lives have been changed, inspired, and moved by the message of courage, love, and concern expressed in the video.

The focus of the Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project has been to promote distribution of the video to Rotary Clubs around the world. 129 Recognizing the additional problems of language differences and the diverse social conditions of peoples from all over the globe, the soundtrack has been translated into many languages, converted to DVD format and given worldwide distribution. More recently, the publication and distribution of an excellent AIDS awareness and prevention resource maintains a high LARAP priority. Over 6,000 copies of the book, HIV, Health and Your Community: A Guide for Action was distributed to Rotary clubs free of charge. With this program, LARAP hopes to accomplish two important goals – provide health care workers and clinics with practical HIV/AIDS information and encourage community leaders to become involved in the fight against AIDS.

We are very proud of the Los Altos Rotary AIDS Project. Beyond the good work of the project, it has also brought much favorable publicity internationally for Rotary. In fact, the Rotary Club of Los Altos was recognized at the RI Convention in Mexico City as the number one Club in all of Rotary in the field of public relations. More important, though, is the fact that we have touched lives; we have given encouragement to those afflicted with AIDS and their families, and we have raised the consciousness of people everywhere regarding the threat presented by this terrible disease.

In September 2008, a subcommittee of the LARAP board began to meet to consider future directions for the project’s efforts in education about and prevention of AIDS. The direction agreed upon was to support efforts to prevent the transmission of HIV from pregnant mothers to their babies, known in the medical literature as PMTCT. In the next few years we will be supporting the work of Save the Children. This new direction for LARAP has been dubbed the Child AIDS Prevention or CAP project. The plan is to build a coalition of Rotary Clubs first in District 5170, then in the rest of California and the nation to help prevent the 400,000 infant HIV infections, which occur each year throughout the continent of Africa. Our initial International Rotary partner on the CAP project will be the Rotary Club of Sinkor (Liberia). In 2011, the Rotary Clubs of Los Altos and Sinkor received a Global Grant of $75,000 to pursue this project in Liberia. An in-country training session, funded by a $60,000 Global Grant, was conducted in early 2012 where 50 Liberians healthcare professionals were educated in the prevention of mother to child transmission.