Ruth Marie Brinker (May 1, 1922 - August 8, 2011) is an American AIDS activist and nonprofit founder, Project Open Hand. He started his activism in 1985 by providing food and food for AIDS patients in San Francisco who were too ill to cook or shop.
Brinker was born Ruth Marie Appel on May 1, 1922, in Hartford, South Dakota. He moved to San Francisco, California, during the mid-1950s, where he married her husband, Jack Brinker, in 1957. They had two daughters, Lisa and Sara, but subsequently divorced in 1965.
In the mid-1980s, the AIDS epidemic swept through San Francisco. One of Brinker's friends, who had AIDS and malnutrition, became too weak to cook or leave his home for shopping. Brinker, who was a grandmother at the time, and a group of her friends collaborated to provide food by dividing the moon to take them home. Unfortunately, some volunteers went on vacation and the man died by the time they returned to San Francisco.
Ruth Brinker vowed not to let the same fate befall someone else in San Francisco. He previously worked in the foodservice industry and as a volunteer for Meals on Wheels, the same predecessor that provides food for people who can not buy or prepare food. He began organizing volunteers on a larger base to provide hot food to AIDS patients in the city. This led to the formation of a non-profit, Open Hand Project, which was founded in the summer of 1985 by Brinker and seven of his friends. The organization started with a $ 2,000 small grant from the Zen study group and donated cooking utensils. The Open Hand project has since expanded to provide food and other services to parents and people with other chronic diseases. In 1987 and 1988, Project Open Hand served 300 AIDS patients using an annual budget of $ 500,000. In 2011, Project Open Hand provided 2,600 meals a day using $ 5.6 million in public and private donations. Non-profit Brinker has been copied by "dozens" of organizations across the United States, according to the New York Times .
Ruth Brinker died of complications of vascular dementia at her home in San Francisco on August 8, 2011, at the age of 89. He survived by his two daughters, one grandson and great-grandchild.
Video Ruth Brinker
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments