The largest AIDS conference in the world, brining together over 20,000 individuals, is coming to Washington DC this summer. Asia Catalyst is pleased to award travel scholarships to help four Chinese AIDS activists take part in AIDS 2012, the world’s largest AIDS conference. The four activists – three women and one man — include the mother of a child living with HIV/AIDS, a former sex worker, a rights advocate, and a youth leader. They will speak at the conference, join in roundtable discussions, and share policy recommendations with the UN and international agencies. Together, they represent the next generation of civil society leaders in China’s fight against HIV/AIDS.

In preparation for the International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. in July, the China team, together with three student volunteers from the International School of Beijing, has been supporting our three Chinese delegates to finalize their presentations, posters, and design brochures about their organizations.

2012 NGO Leadership Cohort – In May, Mike, Gisa, Hou Ye, and Meg ran the postponed second weekend workshop for the NGO Leadership Cohort, a year-long capacity building program that brings together representatives from nine Chinese health NGOs for intensive training in nonprofit management and advocacy. Our nine NGO representatives met in Tianjin, in the expansive office of Tianjin Shenlan, a member of the cohort and an impressive LGBT group that provides a range of services, including HIV testing and outreach to male sex workers. During the workshop, participants used the strategic plans they created after the first workshop in December to study additional program and financial management skills. Meg also coached participants in fundraising, culminating in an exercise in which participants practiced pitching projects to Asia Catalyst staff who played the roles of potential donors.

We are currently finalizing the curriculum for our third session in August. At the third session we will begin selection of trainer assistants for the 2013 cohort.

Coaching– In Beijing, Mike and Gisa finished intensive coaching (already begun in January) on strategic planning for a male sex worker organization that works on HIV/AIDS prevention and sexual violence. During the two-day workshop, Gisa and Mike helped the directors of this organization think through community engagement strategies and design a volunteer and staff management system.

They also held two one-day workshops on management skills, one in Nanjing for new disability rights groups, and one in Guangzhou for LGBT groups. We have found this series of one-day no-fee workshops to be a great way to get our name and approach out to new sectors of China’s fast-growing NGO sector, and to learn about potential new partners and cohort participants.

While in Guangzhou they visited one of the organizations participating in the NGO Leadership Cohort. This visit provided an opportunity to learn about the day-to-day work of one of our cohort partners while observing their HIV rapid testing program.

Meanwhile, program assistant Hou Ye visited an NGO Leadership Cohort participant located in Ruili, a border city between Myanmar and Yunnan Province. The organization provides support and counseling to people living with HIV/AIDS. Hou Ye worked with the organization’s three staff members to examine and revise their strategic plan and annual program timeline.

Research and Advocacy – This has been a busy quarter, thanks largely to the presence of Shen Tingting as our visiting research fellow. Tingting will return to Beijing in August.

• New report on employer discrimination against former drug users living with HIV/AIDS – In April, we published a short report from Kangxin Home, a Yunnan NGO, on discrimination by small businesses. Kangxin is following up with local officials.
• Compensation for the blood disaster – We continued to do follow-up meetings on our compensation report in Beijing and Bangkok.
• HIV testing and human rights – In response to a brewing controversy in China over government plans to mandate use of real names in HIV testing, Tingting wrote a policy paper analyzing international standards and how they apply in China. We are currently planning to release the paper in Chinese in advance of the AIDS 2012 conference.
• Treatment access for people with HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) – Tingting has also been working with journalist Paul Mooney to get treatment for a girl infected with HIV and HCV through the blood disaster. She and our summer law intern, John, are working on a submission to the UN on treatment access issues. Tingting is also connecting with other groups advocating for HCV treatment at the regional and global levels.
• Know It, Prove It, Change It – We completed the Chinese and Thai editions of Know It: The Rights Framework and are preparing to launch them at AIDS 2012. We also produced the first very rough draft of Change It: Ending Rights Abuses, the third and final volume of the rights curriculum.

NEW TO THE WEBSITE

While we continue to blog several times a week with updates and news items we have also added whole new pages to our website this quarter; we now have our Chinese language program page, and our Asia Report Legal Database, as well as our Facebook page available live. Feel free to check them out and let us know what you think.

IN THE OFFICE

This spring, we were delighted to welcome a new member of our board of directors, Chad Bolick. Chad is the director of impact and innovation at Tides Foundation, where he leads efforts to evaluate the impact of this leading philanthropic services organization on the nonprofit sector. Prior to joining Tides, Chad served as the director of global partnership development at BSR, as the country director of the Vietnam Education Foundation and as a program officer with The Asia Foundation. Chad lives in San Francisco with his family.

We’ve also benefited this summer from help by three interns: John Signoriello, a law student at Fordham; Adair Kleinpeter-Ross, a student at Barnard College; and Eloise Rotenberg, a recent Barnard graduate. Many thanks to our interns for their help!