Our Partners
Starting Over
Starting Over Inc., based in Riverside but stretching all the way into Los Angeles County, aims to eradicate poverty and incarceration, and create communities of care that support self-determination and that keep families safe.
The organization blends direct services with civic engagement and public policy work using the A New Way of Life program model. Using this model, Starting Over Inc. addresses both the direct effects of destructive policies and the root causes of their client’s difficult situations.
Starting Over helps men, women, and children who are unhoused transition from being unhoused and addresses the often associated cycles of poverty, substance abuse, mental illness, and recidivism.
Through consistent meetings and correspondence, Starting Over Inc. has provided the California MEPS Hub with information about the system implemented in their organization crucial to ensuring the best adaptation of MEPS with the staff and guests of Starting Over Inc. They’ve also provided important information about the recruitment and retention of participants, including strategizing ways to stay in contact with participants after they’re enrolled.
CAL-PEP
CAL-PEP is a community-based, African American-centered organization dedicated to providing coordinated HIV, behavioral health, outreach, and navigation services to communities of color in the Bay Area. CAL-PEP programs have evolved with HIV science for a high impact approach since 1990.
The organization’s approach focuses on maintaining confidentiality with their clients, meeting their clients on their time and turf with a nonjudgmental approach. They provide one-on-one repeated contact with their clients, providing resources for safer sex and safer syringe use, linking their clients to care, and providing support through peer-based programs with incentives.
CAL-PEP has grown over the past three decades, providing crucial support services to youth, adult, families, people experiencing homelessness, people who use substances, sex workers, previously incarcerated individuals, and women of trans experience. Their focus is getting HIV positive individuals into treatment and reducing transmission from HIV positive to HIV negative partners. Additionally, they seek to expand prevention with HIV negative persons through PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) and linking HIV positive persons with care and drug treatment to identify, link, and retain persons living with HIV to care.
They also utilize the “Each one teach one,” to provide accessible health education to reduce sexual risk, prevention infections, link individuals to health care, treatment and support services.
