Project Description

Global ACCESS (AIDS Coalition for Civic Engagement and Smart Solutions) is a leadership development institute to promote civic participation and create a comprehensive communication hub for the global AIDS movement. Global ACCESS is a project of Health Global Access Project (Health GAP).

Global ACCESS is a new formation of old work. For years, as an organizer with Health GAP, I have been training low-income people living with AIDS in advocacy and community organizing skills and bringing them into the fight against global AIDS.

Global ACCESS provides training in:
*concrete leadership skills;
*comprehensive grassroots advocacy and organizing skills, such as AIDS issue based trainings, taught by leaders in the global AIDS movement;
* in-depth skills trainings such as "birddogging" trainings and
* an innovative communication fellowship specifically designed for new leaders who want to make their mark.

Global ACCESS borrows best practices from union and community organizing trainings that offer in-depth and comprehensive leadership, advocacy and organizing skills. Currently, this type of training is not available to domestic and global AIDS activists.

In addition, Global ACCESS creates a comprehensive communications hub for the entire AIDS movement. The communications department will allow us to offer an affordable option for grassroots organizations when they need to develop campaign materials or a media strategy.

Global ACCESS offers selected "fellows" concrete training and skills development in several stages:

Stage 1 includes 20 day-long leadership development trainings, offering concrete advocacy and organizing skills across the United States.

Stage 2 includes weekly virtual classes (using computers and conference calls) on global AIDS issues, taught by leaders and experts in the movement. Professors include Brook Baker from Northeastern University Law School who is a world renowned expert on Intellectual Property Rights and Trade policy which are frequently used as barriers to access to HIV treatment and Dr. Patricia Siplon who wrote the book AIDS and the Policy Struggle in the United States.

Stage 3 includes monthly meetings with decision makers. These can include "birddogging" legislators on issues, or formal sit downs to discuss policy issues.

Stage 4 includes an internship in our communications "department". We see improved, smart communication and media strategy as a need in the global AIDS movement. Global ACCESS thinks our fellows can fill this need and this will provide them with an additional skill not usually learned in other leadership development trainings. We also plan to offer our communication assistance to campaigns we support and for a fee as a way of building in a form of self-sustainability. Our fellows will operate virtually via computers and cell phones reducing the cost of this valuable and needed service.

Global ACCESS has trained 500 people per year across the United States in our Stage 1 one-day local leadership development trainings. It is from this pool that our fellows for stage 2,3, and 4 will be selected for our future component of the work. Throughout my time as an organizer with Health GAP, I have trained over 1000 individuals from across the country

In this next year, Global Access will hold 36 meetings with key decision makers on issues that are most important to the global AIDS movement.

In 2008, Global ACCESS will issue 12 press releases, 6 op-eds and 24 letters to the editor. Our fellows will win victories on campaigns, including increasing funding to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
We are developing and diversifying the entire global AIDS movement here in the United States. Our fellows will understand the importance of having an "inside/outside" strategy. They will have sharp and innovative communication skills and will be adept at creating a media strategy. They will develop strong and lasting relationships with each other and with key decision makers. We believe that our graduates will be able to move into key positions at organizations in DC, and throughout the US to coordinate strategy and, most of all, win.

Global ACCESS will work closely in the next 2 years with a consultant to track our overall contribution to the global AIDS movement, and we will have the students evaluate their courses.

Project Description

I organized a group of kids to help improve our community. I wanted to use this as a way to create better leadership qualities in the younger generation of our community. We planted beautiful plants and picked up trash along the highways. We call freshman greenhands, so all of the students involved were freshman. I knew that creating this, would give the kids in our community something good to keep them busy and off of the streets. We repainted the park equipment, and visited the older members of the community, with a pancake breakfast.

Project Description

Operation Understanding DC (www.OUDC.org) is a year-long leadership development program for African-American and Jewish students from the DC metropolitan area.

The intensive cross-cultural journey begins in the students' junior year of high school with weekend retreats and Sunday evening programs dealing with the history, beliefs, and practices of both communities. These educational sessions are designed to give the group a common knowledge base from which further dialogue and learning will develop. This is based on the principle of Sankofa, or Never Forget, for without a firm grounding in the past we cannot move forward.

The apex of the OUDC experience is the Summer Civil Rights Journey. Together we travel to New York City, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee all in one month visiting people and places of historical significance to both communities, with an emphasis on learning about the Civil Rights Movement. Traveling on a bus for several weeks with 30 or so engaged and motivated high school students is a truly unique experience that has the potential to be life-changing for many participants. While we meet with different speakers and foot-soldiers of the movement, OUDC stresses the important role of the youth in creating the changes brought about in the '50s and '60s, and the continuing power of young people to bring about positive change for our communities, our country, and our world.

The third segment of the program after the summer journey involves weekend retreats and sunday programs like the first part, but this time we teach speech-making and group facilitation skills so that students can take what they've learned over the course of the year together and go back into their communities to spread the word. Students lead workshops in churches, synagogues, mosques, and schools around the area. These skills-building programs provide yet another unique and valuable experience that many alumni of the program have found useful in their years after participation, in college and beyond.

By bringing together the African-American and Jewish youth of the DC area to discuss issues of prejudice, discrimination, hatred, and social change, OUDC hopes to create a future generation of leaders that will work together to fight racism and discrimination everywhere.