Volunteer Coordinator Flo Elyon and Bobby Reynolds take part in a Shanti Role Play Training
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“Let your feelings show. It’s a nice gift to give someone.”
-Flo Elyon,
Shanti volunteer and volunteer coordinator late 70s to 1985.
“If, after the training, you still want to be a volunteer, plan on a lot of sadness, a lot of shit, a lot of anger, bitterness and frustration. Plan on possible death. Prepare to encounter the worst and the best in people. Plan on seeing strength and seeing small victories and triumphs on a human scale. Plan on seeing courage and great dignity. Your experience will be your reward.”
–Joe Correa, AIDS activist and Shanti client/volunteer
“I was confronted with the fact that nothing I had read or thought about prepared me for the reality I was facing. All my somewhat smug beliefs and ideas about death and dying crumbled in the face of the helplessness evoked by looking into burning face of suffering.”
-Robin Rose, Shanti staff member and volunteer from 1983-1995.
“The growth, to me, personally, was more about sort of the insights into what it was like to be living with AIDS…that’s were the Shanti training honestly really was helpful. That Shanti training has, in my other relationships as a supervisor, as an employee, as a human being, as a mother, and a wife, going back to those roots it has definitely formed who I am as a person and the approach that I take when I remember it, what the basis of emotional support and connection is.”
-Kathryn Ficke-Boyle, Practical Support volunteer and volunteer training coordinator and outreach, 1990-1993. Interview with Brendan McHugh, December 2018.
