From the Wall Street Journal Asia
By Mark Heywood and Sara L.M. Davis
China will observe World AIDS Day on Thursday with events in which Chinese leaders publicly embrace people living with HIV/AIDS. But on every other day of the year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese living with HIV/AIDS are treated as second-class citizens.
By Meg Davis
Asian NGOs and government representatives met in Bangkok from March 29-31 at the Asia-Pacific Regional Consultation on Universal Access. They consulted together to make recommendations on how to ensure universal access to AIDS treatment - one of the Millennium Development Goals. This time, human rights was included, and it was fascinating to see the process and participate in it.
By Meg Davis
What's your vision? Most organizations have a mission statement; the groups we work with in China generally write broad, vague, uninspiring statements in order to meet requirements for registration. These don't give a sense of their vision to create social change.
By "vision statement", different groups mean different things. We mean a one-sentence picture of the change your organization will create in the world in 20 or 30 years. This statement goes in the box all the way on the right in the logic model we use in strategic planning. It's the first piece to create in this approach to strategic planning, and an important way to unify and focus everyone in the organization on a shared goal. Once the vision statement is set, it's easier to break it down into medium-term goals and immediate actions.
By Meg Davis
There's no getting around it - for most of us, creating a budget is a joyless task. But while it requires dusting off math skills some of us hoped we'd left behind in school, budgeting can also help you to develop useful and practical plans. This week's blog post describes how to create a very basic program budget.
We recommend creating a budget that is relatively detailed from the beginning. You may or may not decide to send this detailed budget to donors when you apply for grants (more on this at the end), but you should still create one for internal use in your organization.
In June 2010, we posted this blog post on how China's new nonprofit regulations - including new, stricter regulations on INGOs in China's Yunnan Province -- were affecting grassroots groups. The essay was reposted to Chinapol (aka C-Pol), an email list of professionals working on Chinese policy issues. The following discussion between Asia Catalyst ED, Sara L.M. Davis (also known by her nickname, Meg) and Shawn Shieh of Marist College is reprinted here with consent from both.
Shawn Shieh writes:
Meg,
By Meg Davis
The crisis of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is creating incentive and space for mobilization of marginalized communities, and otherwise restrictive states such as China and Myanmar (Burma) are largely allowing it. In recent months, both Chinese and Burmese sex worker-led organizations have moved into the public eye.
By Ken Oh and Meg Davis
作者：Ken Oh、王翠凤
There were dozens of sessions and over
20,000 people at the 2010 International AIDS Conference, whose theme was
"Rights Here, Rights Now". We can't bring it all to you, but here's a roundup
of the highlights:
2010年的国际艾滋病大会，共有20,000人参加，召开了多场会议。本次会议的主题是 "我们的权利，就在此时此地"。在此，我们不能将会议的全部呈现给各位，但将为各位呈上本次会议亮点的综述。
Microbicide
gel: A major breakthrough in AIDS fight
In one of the most attention-grabbing
sessions of the conference, the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in
South Africa reported that a clinical study of 889 women has found that a microbicide
gel used before and after sex could reduce risk of HIV infection by nearly 40
percent. The findings are especially encouraging
as six previous microbicide trials have failed over the past fourteen years.
The self-applied gel could make it possible for women to reduce the risk of HIV
infection.
杀微生物凝胶：艾滋病战役中的主要突破
在其中一场引人注目的会议中，南非艾滋病研究项目中心报告道，通过对889名妇女进行临床研究，他们发现妇女在性活动前后使用一种杀微生物凝胶后，其感染艾滋病病毒的风险将降低40%。在经历过去14年来，
6次杀微生物剂研制的失败之后，这次的发现令人精神为之一振，这种可自主使用的凝胶使得降低妇女感染艾滋病的风险成为可能。