In The Interim

Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu,
senior superintendent of the
Ghana Education Service,
with Kim Roth, MJAC
program director, who helped
with arranging the visit of
the African delegation.

Nitzkin takes a few months
away from full-time motherhood
to step in at MJAC.

DIANA LIEBERMAN

Copy Editor/Education Writer

children together, not only do they
learn when they're in the environ-
ment with us, they talk together as
they move on," Nitzkin said.
• "We also talk to parents separately
so they'll know more than their chil-
dren," she added.
Attempts to combat HIV and
AIDS in Africa face a major road-
block largely eliminated in the
United States, said Kim Roth, MJAC
program director.
"There's a medication given to
pregnant women with AIDS that
lowers the risk of passing along the
virus to the infant to 3-4 percent. In
Africa, they don't have this drug,"
Roth said.
Another barrier to stemming the
tidal wave of HIV-AIDS is the belief
that victims can just take a few pills
to keep it under control. There's lim-
ited understanding that the medica-
tion is very expensive, debilitating to
other body functions and hard to
obtain.
Also complicating prevention
efforts is the "very low-risk' percep-
tion in Ghana, especially among the
youth," said Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu,
senior superintendent of that West

A

African country's education service.
Before the African delegation
arrived at MJAC, Roth, who had
worked with the IVC in arranging
the visit, went with the Africans to
morning services at the Islamic
Center of America in Detroit.
"As a Jewish-based organization, we
take very seriously the mandate to
reach out to the stranger," she said.
"It was a further honor for me, as a.
Jewish woman, to be invited to pray
with them at the Islamic Center."
She was especially impressed when
one of the visitors told her: "In my
country, they'd never believe a
Muslim sitting down with a Jew and
helping him."

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ndrea Nitzkin of Farmington Hills, interim
director of the Michigan Jewish AIDS
Coalition, got involved in the fight against HIV
and AIDS for the sake of her unborn children.
"I was working for the Jewish Federation [of
Metropolitan Detroit] when I began
to volunteer at MJAC," she said.
None of her close friends or rela-
tives has AIDS or HIV, the virus that
causes the disease.
"I just felt that, some day, when I
had children, they'd say, 'Mom, there
was an AIDS crisis. What did you
do?"' she said.
"I wanted to be able to say I wasn't just
an innocent bystander. I did my part."
. Nine years after she began volun-
Andrea Nitzkin,
teering, Nitzkin has a husband, Jay,
MJAC's interim
and sons Jacob, 5, and Afi, 2. In 1996, director, has been
she earned a master's degree in social
involved in the
work from the University of
organization for
Michigan. She worked four years as
nine years.
MJAC's HIV-AIDS program director,
and most recently, volunteered as the
organization's head of fund-raising.
Now, Nitzkin has given up full-time motherhood to work
part-time for MJAC, taking over from Arlene Sorkin.
. The former executive director left to pursue interests in
educational theater — interests fostered during the past
two years when Sorkin produced the Illusion Theater's
From the Beginning, I Did Not Speak In Secret for MJAC.
MJAC has a three-member professional staff, with about
70 trained volunteers. The organization's board has begun
searching for a new executive director. Because of her
young family, Nitzkin has not applied for the job. ❑

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