The Minority Aids Project
- Minority AIDS Project (MAP) is the first community-based HIV/AIDS organization established and managed by people of color in the United States. Archbishop Carl Bean and members of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church founded Minority AIDS Project in 1985.
- MAP’s services and educational programs are community-wide and available to all people. However, from the beginning, the primary focus of our services and outreach has been to People of color communities in Central and South-Central Los Angeles. Until the doors opened at MAP, these communities had little or no real access to preventive education and essential health care services.
- Archbishop Bean and the church congregation volunteered and began the work by providing a culturally competent continuum-of-care of AIDS-related services as well as providing the facts about HIV/AIDS to individuals and community groups who were interested. At the outset, the services met the needs of living with AIDS.
- Under the leadership of Archbishop Carl Bean, the Minority AIDS Project was born as the main outreach ministry of Unity Fellowship of Christ Church. MAP remains the first non-profit, community service agency founded and managed by people of color to educate and serve communities of color who continue to be disproportionately infected and affected by the HIV/AIDS virus.