New Year Greetings and Personal Thanks

[Guest guest]

Dear SAATHII advisers, members and well wishers,

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I hope 2002 will bring

us all little bit more closer and together in fight against HIV in India. I

would like to take this opportunity to thank you very much for your advice,

participation and input in our activities in India or for Indians. Many of

you lend us your time, your name and your resources, which made many of our

activities possible and successful. Many of you have spent countless hours

advising me and encouraging us to move ahead with our activities, despite

our lack of experiences or major financial resources. I am truly grateful

for every minute of your time.

Each of you play crucial and varied roles in tackling HIV epidemic in India.

Our role is to bring all of you to the table for continued discussions and

debates. Many times it is very difficult (next to impossible) as all of us

have various platforms or opinions or different bureaucratic affiliations in

fight against HIV. We at SAATHII strive to be a neutral body, with an

understanding that any less contribution from each of you will be a major

loss towards prevention, care, treatment and advocacy.

Thus it will be our responsibility and continued commitment to bring all us

of together from time to time, despite our disagreements. I am sure all of

us agree that we are working towards only two goals ‘’to protect one billion

from being infected’’ and ‘’caring for 5 million who are infected’’. We

hope to see you at the India-Satellite meeting in Barcelona. Everybody who

attended Durban satellite went away with positive spirit and we would like

to replicate that spirit with much more focused agenda in Barcelona.

Please continue to send your suggestions, criticism and good wishes.

In solidarity

Subha for SAATHII

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SAATHII 2001 Update:

INFORMATION DISSEMINATION has been our number one focus in last two years.

Many have come up to us personally at various conferences to inform us that

the information (research, funding and training) we disseminate via SAATHII

(saathii ) list serve is very useful for those with limited

electronic resources and time. We will try to improve our technology and

services as resources become available for us to do so. We are currently

serving 1050 individuals via this list serve.

We also would like to thank forum ( )

for their collaboration with SAATHII in information dissemination. We hope

to co-ordinate our list serves better in future to avoid duplication.

electronic forum fosters daily discussions and sharing of

information about HIV issues in India among 850 groups or individuals

working in or for India.

SAATHII Website (www.saathii.org or www.hivindia.org) dedicated to providing

India specific HIV information is getting constructed and will be able to

provide valuable information some time very soon. If you would like to

assist us any way to speed up the process please let us know.

SETTING UP AN INFORMATION RESOURCE CENTERS FOR/IN INDIA: We are trying to

set up a resource center in India to disseminate information for those with

no access to Internet and also to disseminate information that can’t be

transmitted via e-mail (e.g books, CD ROM, UNAIDS/WHO documents).

Organizations with similar interests and have funding, please do e-mail us

so that we can move ahead with this endeavor soon. We would like this

resource center to be lead by PWA organizations, hoping that this center can

be used for support groups and training of PWAs and small NGOs.

ORGANIZING SATELLITE MEETINGS AND ADVOCAY EVENTS has been our number two

focus. We had conducted several satellite meetings, facilitated several

discussions, and organized advocacy events with specific emphasis on

India/ASIA. All these meetings were possible only due to your valuable

presence and input. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING

TOWARDS THESE EVENTS. Your intellectual and moral support (and where ever

feasible financial support) keeps us moving ahead in a positive direction.

We are very excited about our upcoming India Satellite at the World AIDS

Conference in Barcelona. You will be receiving a preliminary announcement

about this very soon. Those who are interested to co-sponsor, collaborate or

assist us in any way please do write to us. We would like to make this a

valuable meeting for sharing ideas, networking, and setting priorities. I

hope we all can work together to have one meeting rather than two to three

competing meetings.

NETWORKING various individuals and organizations has been and will be a

mantra for SAATHII. It was gratifying to note that at the recent meeting

with the Health Minister at UNGASS, many NGO expressed their interest in

making SAATHII as a central mechanism for communication related to HIV

issues for the whole country. It is an ambitious project, however, we will

be able to make this happen by end of 2003 with the assistance of a small

grant we received from the Lloyd Foundation. We thank JOHN LLOYD

FOUNDATION for their interest in SAATHII.

This grant will enable us to map the services in India and network various

organizations either by state or issue. Of course we will need lot of help

from you to make this happen. We will request specific information about

your programs some time very soon. If you would like to collaborate with us

on mapping the HIV services in India, please send us an e-mail. SAHAYA

(www.sahaya.org) is serving as a fiscal sponsor and collaborator for this

project, as SAATHII is not yet 501c approved for receiving funds. We thank

SAHAYA profusely for their assistance.

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Sai Subhasree Raghavan, Ph.D. ,

Assistant Professor in Clinical Nutrition Medicine

Harlem Hospital Center of College of Physicians & Surgeons

Columbia University, New York, NY 10032

Ph: 212 939 2313, Fax: 212 939 2869