Boston Living Center merges with Victory Programs

Following termination of former exec. dir., the BLC must raise $100,000 to fund operations.

The Boston Living Center is merging with Victory Programs, the organizations reported this week.

The BLC, New England's largest community and resource center for people living with HIV/AIDS, was shaken in late February after funds were misappropriated by then-Executive Director Valerie Tebbetts. "[The BLC has] always done a great deal of good with a very small budget; that budget has grown smaller in this difficult economy," read a joint statement released by BLC Board Chair Sara Andrews, BLC Director of Development Marc Davino, and Victory Programs CEO Jonathan Scott. "That is why we were so disheartened to learn...that the Executive Director at that time was misappropriating agency funds."

The statement continued with a stark description of the financial troubles weathered by the organization, while at the same time continuing to provide their crucial programs and services. "We are proud that the BLC has continued to operate at the same high level of service our members have always known with no disruption in programming, despite the additional financial difficulties this situation has caused," the statement read. "However, the agency is facing significant challenges in the wake of this event."

The statement referred to the two organizations' merger as "a very viable step."

In the coming weeks, however, the BLC must raise a total of $300,000 to meet real-time operations expenses to continue running the Center. Approximately $100,000 has been raised as of this date; Victory Programs has agreed to commit the final $100,000 to match donations.

"The BLC was built against all odds through the tenacity of the most loving hearts our world has ever known -- built by those dying of AIDS and by those who loved someone with AIDS. When medicine offered no answers, all we had was the miracle of tenderness, kindness, and the purest form of love I have ever known," Jonathan Scott said. "Should the BLC shutter it doors for good because of this one heinous act, the disaster to our community of people living with AIDS in our own Boston will be catastrophic and immeasurable. For years to come our community will lament: How could we let this accident happen when we had the power to stop it?"

"So stop it now," Scott said. "With every breath and atom that tells you this cannot happen on our watch. This is the day. This is the moment to stop it now. Harness the power of the passion that created the BLC in its beginnings when all we had to fight for our lives was kindness, was love."