Mandate and Guiding Principles
Our Mandate
The AIDS Bereavement and Resiliency Program of Ontario responds to effectively mitigate the impact of AIDS and overdose-related grief and loss on organizations, staff and volunteers and community members living with HIV/AIDS. To achieve this, we:
- Assist in the assessment and enhancement of individual and agency coping strategies related to loss and transition.
- Develop and deliver agency interventions, educational presentations, workshops, sessions, and research initiatives incorporating evidence-based knowledge and bereavement expertise.
- Provide innovative training to organizations, staff and people living with HIV/AIDS to increase communication skills, peer support and community resiliency strategies.
- Ensure excellence in our work through the development of sustaining, relevant, creative and evolving responses to the changing nature of loss within diverse AIDS-impacted communities.
Guiding Principles
We understand that with the changing nature of HIV and harm reduction, agency personnel and impacted communities are relating to conditions that involve unpredictability, uncertainty and anticipatory grief, in addition to the pre-existing legacy of multiple losses.
We believe that our work must be:
- Grounded in solid theory
- Shaped by the experience of the people we work with
- Linked to people’s broader life experiences
- Framed within a context of equity and inclusion
- Trusting of everyone’s unique capacity to survive, thrive, and make meaning