The AIDS Memorial Quilt is an ever changing, living memorial dedicated to the mission of remembrance, education, inspiration and conscience.

Established in 1987, The NAMES Project Foundation is the non-profit organization that is the caretaker of The AIDS Memorial Quilt (The Quilt).  The agency's mission is:  to preserve care for and use The AIDS Memorial Quilt to foster healing, heighten awareness and inspire action in the age of AIDS and beyond.

"The Quilt transforms statistics into souls, loss into hope, and indifference into understanding."                                                                             -Harriet Sanford, President & CEO, The NEA Foundation 

Throughout its history The Quilt – now recognized through an act of congress as an American Treasure - has been used to fight prejudice, raise awareness and funding, as a means to link hands with the global community in the fight against AIDS, and as an effective tool in HIV and AIDS education and prevention

New single panels arrive at The NAMES Project on a regular basis and sections of The Quilt are continuously on display across the country – in middle and high schools, on college campuses, in places of worship, community centers, businesses, government centers and corporations – making the realities of HIV/AIDS shockingly real and moving to each of us regardless of ethnicity, class or social group. 

"Wherever it is displayed, The Quilt provides balm for the painful wounds of grief, pours oil into the waters made turbulent by controversy, opens eyes that refuse to see and enlists every person who experiences it to play a role in stopping the pandemic. It is difficult to walk away from The Quilt unchanged."                                                                                  -Julie Rhoad, President & CEO, NAMES Project Foundation/AIDS Memorial Quilt