It was announced on Thursday 3 June, that the Make A Difference Trust will close after nearly 15 years of providing help to those suffering with HIV and AIDS. The closure, they say, comes as a result of a lack of fundraising events due to the pandemic.
The charity, also known as MAD Trust, is part of the theatre community and is an organisation dedicated to providing support for those suffering with HIV and AIDS, here in the UK and around the world.
However, they say the effect the pandemic has had on the theatre community has been “devastating.” Despite theatres slowly reopening, they “believe it will be some time before theatres are able to support our events, which has made fundraising for the Trust unsustainable.”
With theatres closed for much of the past 14 months, MAD Trust’s last fundraising event was in December 2019, leaving them with “significantly diminished unrestricted funds.”
Now, they say it’s their time to “bow out and lower the curtain.”
Melanie Tranter, cofounder and chair of the charity, expressed gratitude for how much society has grown in their period of work, saying: “While HIV has by no means gone away, we are so proud of how far society has come since we established Make a Difference Trust.”
Whilst they admit their work has changed over the previous couple of decades, they believe that there was always an “exponential need for support” for those living with the illness, and families who have lost loved ones.
Currently, just over 100,000 people in the UK live with HIV or AIDS.
Words by Tom Charlesworth.
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