Our Mission

Metro TeenAIDS is a community health organization dedicated to supporting young people in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through education, support, and advocacy, MTA works to prevent the spread of HIV, promote responsible decision making, and improve the quality of life for young people infected with, or affected by, HIV/AIDS.

MTA Goals

Goal 1: To provide innovative, science-based, effective education on HIV prevention, care, and related issues.

Goal 2: To provide comprehensive, culturally competent, and age-appropriate counseling, positive youth development programming, and linkages to treatment services to youth who are affected and infected by HIV.

Goal 3: To increase the capacity of young people and MTA to educate decision makers, policy makers, and funders about HIV and encourage their support for policies that promote HIV prevention and care services for all youth affected and infected by HIV.

Goal 4: To provide timely, ongoing evaluation of program effectiveness and organizational efficiency.

Goal 5: To continually diversify and stabilize the resources necessary to support the fulfillment of the MTA mission.

Goal 6: To foster an organization of growth, excellence, and accountability.

MTA Core Values

Involving Youth. Metro TeenAIDS will involve youth at every level of programming and administration, including staff and board of directors, and actively plan ways to provide all young people with new skills, experiences, and ideas.

Valuing Diversity and Respecting All. Metro TeenAIDS will create an environment in which all youth, staff, and volunteers are treated with respect, accepted without judgment.

Serving as a Reliable Community Resource. Metro TeenAIDS will serve as a safe, trustworthy source of support, information, and training for youth in the DC metropolitan area.

Collaborating with Others. Metro TeenAIDS will work in partnership with other organizations dedicated to providing youth with excellent education, services, opportunities, and experiences.

Responsibly Using Our Resources. Metro TeenAIDS will ensure that all resources are being used at maximum efficiency for greatest impact.

What we do

Metro TeenAIDS provides resources to help young people fight AIDS and support each other. MTA is the only organization in the Washington DC-metro area focusing all of its efforts on the unique prevention, education, and treatment needs of young people.

Advancing the overall health of at-risk and HIV-infected adolescents is within our community’s power. Metro TeenAIDS advances community prevention efforts by:

• mobilizing young people in support of their peers,
• battling stigma and indifference by raising community awareness about the threat HIV/AIDS poses to young people,
• providing HIV information and innovative prevention strategies to young people and the adults in contact with them,
• uniting with other organizations to ensure that teenagers receive adolescent-appropriate and easily accessible prevention, health care, and counseling services as well as safe recreational opportunities; and,
• developing comprehensive programs which address the many co-factors of adolescent HIV infection — including low self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse, dangerously unproductive free time, and exposure to peer groups which encourage unhealthy and risky behavior.

Our community risks losing a new generation to HIV.

Washington, D.C. has one of the highest AIDS rates in the country. But very few of those infected are getting the treatment they need. Between 1,000 and 1,500 infected young people live in the Washington, D.C. area. Yet only 100 of them are receiving medical care.

Across the nation, half of all new HIV infections occur among people under the age of 25. But as many as one third of all HIV-infected young people do not know they carry the virus.

With so much ignorance, and such limited healthcare, young people face the highest risk of infection. They also live in a culture that heightens those risks. Adolescents tend to distrust adults who could help them, yet face intense pressure to become sexually active at an early age.

How do we help young people to protect themselves?

MetroTeenAIDS speaks to youth in their own language and in their own space. With our team of specially trained young people, working alongside professionals, we reach out to them in schools, nightclubs, youth centers, shelters and the streets.

History

Early in the AIDS epidemic, physicians, educators, medical experts, and citizens began to recognize the need for more HIV education and support services directed towards young people in the Washington, DC area.

To help meet this pressing need, the Washington Area Consortium on HIV Infection in Youth (WACHIVIY) was founded in 1988. Shortly afterward, WACHIVIY was renamed Metro TeenAIDS.

During its almost twenty years of service to the Washington, DC area, Metro TeenAIDS has provided education programs and prevention resources to well over 200,000 young people, family members, and youth workers in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia.