Community Unity Respect Education Inc. celebrates its first birthday this week with two events, a wine tasting and HIV testing in Plano.
In coordination with the Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Collin College, C.U.R.E. is sponsoring a free HIV testing today, June 22. Collin College is also known as the Spring Creek Campus of Collin County Community College land and is at 2800 E. Spring Creek Parkway in Plano.
Testing hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the college’s Conference Center.
National HIV Testing Day is June 29 and area agencies are offering free HIV testing at various times and locations until then.
On Saturday, June 26, C.U.R.E. hosts a wine tasting at Vinter’s Cellar, 4025 Preston Road in Lakeside Market in Plano from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
C.U.R.E. founder Roseann Rosetti, who also serves on the board of Resource Center Dallas, said the event marks the Collin County group’s first anniversary. The evening honors Glenn Kopanski, who has been an AIDS educator in North Texas schools for five years and has lived with HIV and AIDS for 27 years.
He has survived many opportunistic infections that threatened to take his life. Five years ago, Glenn embarked on the daunting task of taking on the North Texas Independent School Districts to allow him to educate their students about his life with HIV/AIDS. He relates to the students what it’s like to face life daily with this disease and presents his past struggles as a means of teaching consequences to actions.
Kopanski said: “Now at age 52 I feel I have a message to tell young people. The caring in my heart wants to help save young people from this horrific disease.”
The event costs $25 per person or $40 per couple. Funds raised benefit C.U.R.E. Among their planned projects this year are to bring panels from the quilt to Collin County for World AIDS Day again this year to serve as an education tool.
