News & Events
Dean Victor Ayala Honored at Brooklyn Marriott Gala
Dean Victor Ayala
Dean Victor Ayala, School of Professional Studies, was among those honored on June 9 at a black tie benefit gala held at the New York Marriott Brooklyn. The event was a fundraiser for Turning Point/Discipleship, a community-based service organization founded more than a quarter of a century ago to offer Brooklyn youth alternatives to drugs and gang life.
Dean Ayala is the co-founder and founding chairman of the board of the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force, a nationally recognized, model multi-service agency that provides education counseling, case management and medical services for people living with HIV/AIDS. He is also the author of Falling Through the Cracks: AIDS and the Urban Poor, a book that changed the language of AIDS, taking it out of the social science arena and into the arena of everyday language and life -- "the language that people affected by AIDS actually speak," Ayala wrote, "and the lives they actually live." The former chair of City Tech's Department of Human Services, Ayala was saluted for his extensive and widely hailed work in the area of AIDS awareness, education, counseling and treatment.
"I'm pleased to know and to work with the volunteers and others who make Turning Point the vital community organization that it is," Ayala said. "Over the years, it has helped tens of thousands of Brooklynites successfully renew, rebuild and restore their lives. It is a truly inspirational organization."
Ayala was in outstanding company at the Marriott affair. Also honored were award-winning actor, philanthropist and UN Goodwill Ambassador Danny Glover, whose activism on issues of poverty, AIDS and economic underdevelopment in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean is well known, and Senator Charles E. Schumer, a tireless champion of those affected by the AIDS epidemic and author of the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS Law.
Turning Point/Discipleship, which enjoys broad support from diverse corporate and community organizations and agencies, was established by Sunset Park/Brooklyn's Rev. Doug Heilman in 1975. The program opened a residence for young men from dysfunctional home situations six years later that served as a springboard for most of the services that followed. Today, Turning Point provides a wide array of ESL, GED and literacy, skills training, job search and placement, college referral, HIV/AIDS counseling and crisis intervention, transitional and permanent housing, substance abuse counseling and treatment, and recreational, cultural and spiritual enrichment programs, on a direct or outreach basis, to more than 22,000 men, women and children annually.
City Tech is exploring with Turning Point the development of educational opportunities for its clients, a group of whom recently visited the College and toured several of its academic programs. "City Tech's career-specific degree programs and adult education courses would be a perfect complement," Ayala added, "to the types of educational and training programs offered by Turning Point and similar community organizations. Working closely with such groups has been a central theme in the College's long-standing commitment to community assistance."
