Shanti Seattle: Fund Created For `Place To Grieve'

It started with the deaths of 11 friends, in 11 days, to AIDS.

Maxcy Moon, 43, was devastated. He was healthy, not HIV-positive himself, but emotionally he needed a place to grieve his losses.

He turned to Shanti Seattle, which offers emotional support for AIDS and HIV patients and their loved ones and friends. Moon was paired up with counselor Kevin Cavanaugh.

The relationship worked. Moon talked. Cavanaugh, having been trained by Shanti, listened, every week, as no one else could.

For 12 years, Shanti Seattle has been offering such services free of charge. The only program of its kind in King County, it has served 1,200 people this year alone.

The organization could always use more volunteers - but what it really needs now is $60,000.

Today, Seafirst Bank and other donors are depositing $1,500 to the Shanti Emergency Fund, set up to help compensate for cuts in the organization's federal funding. With the number of AIDS groups growing, there is less money to go around.

The $60,000 shortfall is one-third of Shanti's annual budget. Because of it, the organization has cut its staff from 6.5 full-time employees to 4.5. A smaller staff now handles clients, trains volunteers and makes sure that counselor-client relationships are working out.

On World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, Shanti asked Mayor Norm Rice's office for help. No money was available in the city's budget, the mayor's office said - but it did have clout.

The office searched for a donor, contacting Seafirst, which in the past had contributed to the Northwest AIDS Foundation.

The bank came forward. Then Jacobson Jarvis & Co., an accounting firm, and two individuals pitched in, bringing the total money raised to $1,500. It will be deposited today at a Seafirst branch on Capitol Hill.

Shanti officials are grateful, especially at this time of year and especially when so many people and organizations have their hands out. Still, they hope more donors will follow suit.

Shanti, which means "inner peace" in Sanskrit, started in Seattle in 1983. Its office was a room in a house. At the time, the number of people in King County who were diagnosed with HIV was 11.

This year, the organization has a third-floor nook of cubicles in a building on Broadway East, above Hollywood Video and next to Dick's Drive-In. This year, the number of people in the county who have HIV is estimated to be 10,000.

"I would have given up without Kevin," Moon said. "(Shanti) gave me a place where I could take my grief. It is a place that takes the ache out of grief." ----------------------------------------------------------------- To donate

Donations may be made at any Seafirst Bank branch in the name of Shanti Seattle. For more information about the program call 322-0279.