AIDS Project Puts Teens in New Role : bxi

Joining McAteer High School’s cheerleading squad doesn’t interest Maude Dull. Her mind is on helping dying AIDS patients through their final months.

That’s a lofty after-school goal. But the 17-year-old known to her friends as “Manny,” and the AIDS support organization she works for, hopes other youths will follow her example.

“I think a lot of teen-agers think of themselves as immortal . . . not just in terms of AIDS, they just think they are invincible; that they can go around and drive like maniacs, or drink and drive, or take drugs,” said Manny, a volunteer with the nationally acclaimed Shanti Project.

“Teens just think death is something so far away from their sphere of influence,” she added. “This work has shown me it’s not.”

Manny is among 600 volunteers who deliver meals, clean house, do laundry and perform other chores and at times provide emotional support for about 3,000 AIDS patients annually. She’s the group’s youngest volunteer. The average age is 35.

“Manny is younger than us all, but on the other hand, we all start out like children at this: with a big heart and a desire to help and to find out how wonderful life really is,” said Greg Day, community relations director at Shanti.

Manny worked with one AIDS patient for a few months last year, mainly doing household chores. The man died Jan. 12 after transferring the month before to a convalescent home.

“He was the kind of person who was hopeful all the time,” said Manny, a few hours after she learned of his death. Manny has since been assigned to a residence house for five AIDS patients.

Some observers expect teens to provide a new wave of volunteers beginning this year for community health groups dealing with AIDS patients.

Day said he recently was approached for the first time by a group of teen-agers wanting to “help out” AIDS victims as a community project.

“I expect this is just the beginning because AIDS is moving out of the high-risk groups and becoming more of a communitywide problem. As a result, the response will be more communitywide,” said Day.

Shanti is planning to offer support groups next year for children with AIDS and for children who have a parent with AIDS. According to Gayle Lloyd of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, there have been 212 cases of teen-agers with AIDS out of the 53,069 cases reported in the United States by Tuesday.

Teens so far also account for a tiny percentage of total AIDS group volunteers across the United States, said Shanti spokeswoman Annie Hershey.

At the Gay Men’s Health Clinic in New York, one of the nation’s oldest and largest groups providing support to AIDS patients, less than a half-dozen of 1,600 volunteers are youths, the youngest being 16, said spokeswoman Lori Behrman.

To become a Shanti volunteer, Manny underwent a 24-hour training session in September which, among other things, included imagining herself with the skin cancer that strikes some AIDS sufferers, and role-playing, alternating between AIDS patients and their relatives, friends and lovers.

“I think other teen-agers like myself, if they did this, would learn a lot about compassion; learn how to give, how to face death and illness, even to get in touch with their feelings about living,” she said.