By Gisa Hartmann
Last month, I went on my second trip to China for Asia
Catalyst. As we’ve previously discussed in this blog, Asia Catalyst is spending
several years “incubating” or building the internal management skills of
Phoenix, a nonprofit organization of sex workers living with HIV/AIDS. Phoenix
is based in Gejiu, Yunnan, on China’s borders with Vietnam. My main objective
during my two weeks there was to help Phoenix to develop their staff management
system, as well as improve their understanding of budgeting and financial
reporting. We spent an intense two weeks tracking down and discussing every
single receipt for the past two quarters.
One morning, as I was preparing for another day of office
work, I received a call on my cell asking me to come to the office as soon as
possible. The husband of a Phoenix member had died the previous day.
