Bienestar has announced two new health educators to serve the San Diego office. As of Oct. 28, after recent restructuring at Bienestar San Diego, Norma Benavides and Antonio Munoz comprise Bienestar’s full-time health education department.

Many people believed the local office was closed during the two months following executive director Carolina Ramos’ departure to head The Center’s new Latino Services program, and after complaints surfaced from Bienestar San Diego’s board of directors about the Los Angeles-based nonprofit’s management.

“It was never closed,” Munoz explained. “I believe there wasn’t staff, so the staff from L.A. was coming over here, and doing recruiting so people could work here.”

Oscar de la O, Bienestar’s president and CEO, is serving as acting director of the local office. “That’s something new because we really want to get the credibility [back] and revitalize Bienestar,” Munoz said. “So we’re going to be two full-time staff, and he’ll be here twice a week so he can get feedback from our clients, because that’s what matters – it’s their space.”

The office will continue to rely on volunteers to help run the office and programs as well.

“The goal is to know the people, know the community and the community know them, pull everything together and just move on,” Benavides added.

Munoz and Benavides are responsible for doing outreach and providing information, education, referrals and counseling. “We’ll be working at nightclubs, doing outreach and taking the mic and talking to the community,” Munoz said. They will also be doing more outreach to the transgender community, he said.

“Another thing we want to focus on is the INS,” Munoz said. “Political asylum. … Because immigration is another issue in our community, and that’s very important. We have brothers here living with HIV and they can’t go back to their native lands because of medication, homophobia, racism. If they are already living with racism because they are gay, now imagine them being HIV positive.”

A native Nicaraguan, Benavides holds a medical degree as well as certificates in forensic anthropology, sexology and pathology, legal medicine, psychiatry and sexology, as well as in HIV/AIDS and women’s health issues. She has been involved in social services for over 10 years, working with substance abuse issues, social support and general health matters, most recently in East Bay, near San Francisco.

“Our personal goal [at Bienestar] is to reach the Latino community as much as possible,” said Benavides, who also taught part-time at the law school at Jesuit University-Managua in Nicaragua. “Of course we won’t exclude another part of the community, but we want to reach the Latino community as much as possible – not just HIV-positives, but with the lesbian, gay, transgender also. We want to work on other problems, like with Latino women that have been infected because they have sex with men who have had sex with men or other women. That’s a very tragic situation….”

Munoz has worked for the last three years as program coordinator of the Men’s HIV Program at Proyecto Contra SIDA por Vida in San Francisco, where he also served as a health educator.

Born in Tijuana and raised in San Diego, Munoz left San Diego to attend the University of San Francisco, and has moved back to accept the position at Bienestar, where he will implement some of the center’s new programs.

“Bienestar [best fit] the vision that I had,” Munoz said about starting the job. “First of all, because they gave me the opportunity to work where I grew up, because homosexuality is a taboo in the Sherman and Logan Heights neighborhood, and [it is] something that also gave me the opportunity to work with those people, and it’s something where no one has ever gone over there and done any work over there, and it’ll be something new for me and challenging. I love challenges. And most of all, because I grew up there and I know a lot of people and members. I have a lot of gay friends who have always asked for help in the barrio, and no one has gone over there to help them out. I want to give the help.”

Upcoming events at Bienestar include a Thanksgiving celebration and a World AIDS Day celebration on Dec. 1.