International AIDS collaboration: Your Experience Sought

[Guest guest]

Colleagues-

I am writing on behalf of the Global AIDS Action Network (GAAN), a small

U.S.-based organization that helps U.S. groups be more involved with

international AIDS issues and activities. We are working on a project that is

researching how " grassroots " US AIDS groups are finding ways to communicate and

collaborate with their southern colleagues and how these efforts could be

enhanced.

Many US groups are trying to communicate and collaborate with similar

organizations in other nations. These efforts take different forms: joint

activism, technical assistance, two-way partnerships, supplying medicines,

networking, etc and can be long term or short-term, formal or informal.

International collaboration is difficult and many efforts do not succeed. GAAN

is trying to learn from groups that have tried international collaboration with

U.S. AIDS organizations, to see what could be done to improve these efforts.

If you have worked internationally with a grassroots U.S. AIDS group, we would

appreciate hearing from you about what has been successful and what has not. We

have listed some questions below -- but we want to hear what you have found to

be important, whether or not it answers these questions.

Feel free to send this query to others who may be interested.

Basic questions:

* Briefly describe the collaborative project(s) you have worked on, and their

most important goals. (Activism? Sharing expertise? Solidarity? Other?)

* How did you find the U.S. organization(s) you are working with? Through

visits? At conferences? Via the Internet? By personal referrals? In other ways?

* How do you communicate and collaborate? Through the Internet? At conferences?

By telephone? By telephone conference calls? By staffexchanges? In other ways?

* What have you found to be the biggest obstacles to collaboration, and how

could they be lessened?

Boneberg, Global AIDS Action Network (GAAN)

E-mail:globalaids@....

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