About Evergreen AIDS Foundation > EAF History

EAF History

Evergreen AIDS Foundation (EAF) began in 1985 as a grassroots community effort to meet the needs of people in Bellingham living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) and is one of the oldest continuously-operating AIDS service organizations in the country. From this proud beginning of friends helping friends, EAF has evolved to become the largest community-based ASO north of Seattle and south of Vancouver, BC., with seven full- and part-time staff and many volunteers. New drugs, thankfully, have improved, and prolonged the lives of many (but not all) PLWHA. Women, persons of color and youth are now disproportionately affected.

EAF started with some friends (men and women) sitting around in a bar talking about what they could do to help a close friend with AIDS. And help they did -- with food, with chores, with money (AIDS was, is, an impoverishing disease) and, most importantly, with care and support. The friend's name was Barney Wood, and the Barney Wood Memorial Fund now provides emergency financial assistance to scores of PLWHA every year. One, became two, became dozens, as HIV disease came to Bellingham (like everywhere else, not spared). More volunteers, too, and with them organization and a name: Evergreen AIDS Support Services. This committed group, which included the newly-formed Imperial Soveriegn Court, provided information and referrals, emergency financial assistance and volunteer support. Four people attended the first AIDS support group on July 28, 1987. In 1988, sixteen people attended support groups, and EASS answered 195 calls and provided 700 hours of service (in 2004,by copntrast, EAF served over 220 clients, in over 8,200 service encounters).

EAF is a completely different agency today than it was 20 years ago when EASS embarked on its mission to help friends die with dignity and ease. Evergreen AIDS Foundation is a completely different agency today than it was 10 years ago when EAF received its first grant under the Ryan White C.A.R.E. Act and started providing professional case management services. But the integrity of purpose and the commitment to help remain. So do the volunteers and donors. It is the history of community.

Finally, and most importantly in the history of Evergreen AIDS Foundation, are the persons who have died of AIDS and the persons who live with HIV/AIDS. They are the essential part of what we all do, what this agency is, whose courage, grace, fortitude, humor, dignity humbles and enables us. Each, to do more.