On Sunday, Sept. 30, AIDS Walk San Diego will host its 18th annual fund-raising walk. While officials expect to see the same number of participants this year, they hope to raise more money this time around.

Last year, AIDS Walk made more than $500,000. With the event less than two weeks away, The San Diego LGBT Community Center, which organizes the event has already raised $359,000, said Jennifer Jones, The Center’s director of development.

The Center has two goals, Jones said. “One goal is to raise as much money as possible to support HIV/AIDS providers in the county…. The other goal is to make sure that the HIV/AIDS epidemic stays in the forefront of people’s minds,”

She expects that between 10,000 to 12,000 people will participate in this year’s event, and that an additional 3,000 non-participants will donate.

Two hundred teams have signed up, with members in each team ranging in number from five to hundreds, Jones said. At present, a total of 1,200 members make up this year’s teams.

So far The San Diego LGBT Community Center is the top fund-raiser. Last year, The Center raised more than $20,000. This year, it is trying for $30,000 and has already made $22,000. In second place is UCSD Communities with $7,685. HP San Diego follows with $7,543.00. In fourth place is Qualcomm with $6,610.00. Intuit finishes the top five with $6,180.00.

Pamela Clifford, Center board member, has raised the most funds for The Center’s AIDS Walk team, having raised $4,000 of her $5,000 goal. “You know my best friend Jon Kudela sat down with me and really helped me out. So we contacted my friends and he contacted a lot of his friends and you know it’s a great cause, so I think people are really willing,” Clifford said.

The Center gives the money AIDS Walk raises to the Alliance Health Care Foundation’s San Diego HIV Funding Collaborative (SDHFC), which distributes the funds to several dozen HIV/AIDS service providers in the county, said Jones, adding that although The Center provides HIV/AIDS services it does not receive funds from AIDS Walk.

Katherine Crow, Program Officer for SDHFC said the funds from AIDS Walk are placed in a “big pot” and then SDHFC requests funding proposals. An advisory committee then reviews the proposals and determines which organizations they fund based on criteria such as HIV/AIDS reports on county infection trends, the organizations’ objectives and past performance if they’ve received funding in the past. The committee also considers which regions have been hardest hit by the disease or have gaps in service.

For the last four years, SDHFC’s maximum award has been $15,000. This year the advisory committee voted to raise the maximum award to $18,000, said Crow. Typically, SDHFC receives between 30 and 40 proposals per year and the committee awards about 80 to 90 percent of them, said Crow.

“It really is a community-supported event,” said Jones. “We’ve got, you know, schools raising money; we’ve got big institutions raising money. We’ve got lots and lots of companies who have AIDS Walk teams, so it’s really kind of heartening to see all the number of people who just love this event and you feel a personal connection to it.”

Ben Cartwright, Director of the LGBT Resource Center at San Diego State University, has been participating with SDSU students in AIDS Walk for nine years. Cartwright hopes to personally raise $200, while his group TEAM SDSU is attempting to raise $2,000.

Cartwright initially decided to participate in AIDS Walk after volunteering for Mama’s Kitchen in college. “Volunteering for Mama’s Kitchen opened my eyes to the fact that people living with HIV/AIDS are just that – people. They have feelings, needs, emotions, loved ones, hobbies, favorite TV shows, favorite ice cream flavors, shoe collections, jobs and everything else.”

Cartwright said that what brings him back this year is that the event is “an incredible morning. Everything from the good feeling of walking with so many like-minded people, to the emotions that arise when looking at the ‘Path of Remembrance’ at the end of the walk, are all parts of the walk that keep me coming every year. I have great compassion for people with HIV/AIDS and want do my part.”

“The amount of love, and support and caring in the park that day is just tremendous; you can feel it; it’s palpable,” said Jones. “It’s our community’s opportunity to all sort of band together and show just how much we care about those who are with us, how much we care and remember those who have been lost and to know that we are making a tremendous difference in the lives of so many.”

In 2006, 39.5 million of the world’s population was living with HIV according to the World Health Organization. The Center for Disease Control estimates that little over a million of those cases were people living in the United States in 2003. The Department of Public Health Office of AIDS estimates that approximately 2,700 people live with HIV in San Diego County. Since 1981, the county has reported 13,015 cases of AIDS. In 2007, the county reported 319 new AIDS cases and 92 deaths due to the disease since 2006.