[COMMENTARY] Five Years of Inciting Nonprofit Stability

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By Sara L.M. Davis

In November 2006, Chinese AIDS activist Li Dan sent me an email in New York. I had met this young Chinese PhD student turned AIDS activist once or twice, most recently at a dinner honoring him as a recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award.

“We’re thinking of starting an AIDS law center in Beijing,” he wrote in his message. “Do you know anyone who might be interested?”

I did – in fact, I had just come home from having coffee with Jonathan Cohen of the Open Society Institute, who had mentioned an interest in funding an AIDS law project in China. That project launched both Li Dan’s Korekata AIDS Law Center and Asia Catalyst.

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[COMMENTARY] Street Lawyering in Jakarta

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[:en]Last week I went to Jakarta with the harm reduction program director for Open Society Institute and met with a half dozen grassroots groups of injection drug users (IDU). In Indonesia, where AIDS is ravaging the country due to the rapidly-escalating use of drugs, young people have responded by starting small nonprofit groups to reach out to drug users on the street. They hand out clean needles, give advice on AIDS prevention, help people get medical care when they need it, and advocate with the local police. And they’re doing some innovative things on the human rights front, too.

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