On a chilly,
grey fall morning, my wife and I rose early to join my colleagues at the
Dongzhimen subway stop in Beijing for the 2nd annual China AIDS
Walk. We packed a lunch and snacks for
the day - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples and trail mix - and hopped
into a taxi. When we arrived at the subway stop, we found other participants
milling around, collecting their AIDS Walk T-shirts, and waiting to board the
sleek tour buses that would take us up to the Jinshanling Great Wall near
Chengde, about two hours drive northeast of Beijing.
Over the next
half hour, we were joined by the rest of the China Development Brief team,
seven in all, including one staff member from Greenpeace International’s China
office who was tagging along. One of our staff also brought her eight-year old
son who goes by the English name, Howard. Two colleagues texted to tell us they
were not feeling well and would not be able to join us.
My CDB
colleagues had been preparing for this day for weeks, and we had one of the
larger teams participating with 10 people signed up. Organizing a team was
relatively easy. You went onto the China AIDS Walk website, www.chinaaidswalk.org, and registered a team. Team members
were asked to make a minimum online donation to the Walk. We could also ask their friends and family to
make a donation to the Walk to support our team.
When my colleagues
first told me about the Walk, I wasn’t sure why they were so excited about the
event. These types of fundraising events were commonplace in the U.S. where I
grew up. Then over the last few weeks, I began reading more about it, and had
the chance to talk with staff at the Beijing Gender Health Institute, a
grassroots NGO that is the driving force behind the China AIDS Walk, and I
gradually began to realize what made the Walk so special.
The idea of an
AIDS Walk was conceived in the U.S. The first AIDS Walk took place in Los
Angeles in 1985. Since then, over a hundred AIDS Walks have taken place in communities
around the U.S. and in other countries. According to the AIDS Walk Los Angeles
website, the idea for the Walk was conceived by Craig Miller, a community
activist whose approach was to combine “grassroots activism with
fundraising and other campaign strategies to raise both awareness and urgently
needed funds for the fight against AIDS.”
That animating idea nicely describes the thinking of the
organizers of the China AIDS Walk who “believe that social progress is achieved
not by a few people doing a lot, but by many people doing a little.” Not
surprisingly, Xiaogang, the Gender Health Institute’s executive director, was
inspired to bring the Walk to China after participating in the AIDS Walk in San
Francisco. For Xiaogang, the AIDS Walk is part of a larger
organizational strategy to bring together public advocacy, fundraising and
community participation to address challenges in medical care and discrimination
faced by those living with AIDS, as well as the LGBT community in China. Thus, in
addition to organizing the Walk, the Institute is engaged in educating
journalists to report on AIDS and LGBT issues, and has a Queer China and Queer
University program to encourage sympathetic portrayals the AIDS and LGBT community in Chinese media and film.
To understand why
bringing the Walk to China is so significant, we only need to consider how
challenging the Walk’s aims are: public advocacy, public fundraising, public
participation, community organizing, and raising awareness about marginalized
and vulnerable communities. And we are talking here about a grassroots NGO
doing this, not the government. In China, all of these things can be sensitive,
if not illegal.
Take what
appears to be the most innocuous goal of public fundraising. The vast majority
of NGOs in China, whether registered or not, are not permitted by law to engage
in public fundraising. Only a small number of public fundraising foundations,
most of them with close ties to the government, are authorized to do so. In
addition, engaging in advocacy in public spaces, and inviting large numbers of
people to join in, is very difficult, if not impossible in China.
In spite of
these challenges, the organizers of the Walk managed to carry out an event that
accomplished their aims, not once but twice. They organized a Walk on the Great
Wall in 2012 that drew around 120 participants and raised more than 160,000
yuan. This year’s walk held on October 13 surpassed the 2012 numbers. It
attracted more than 200 participants, about 150 of whom actually showed up to
walk for about three hours on the Jinshanling Great Wall, and has so far raised
more than 200,000 yuan which will be used to pay for the organizing costs and
for medical treatment for those living with AIDS. How did they do it? The answer: by collaborating and being
strategic.
Collaboration
involved partnering with a government-backed public fundraising foundation. In
2012, that partner was the China Foundation for Prevention of STD/AIDS. This
year, it was the China Population Welfare Foundation. This partnership allowed
the organizers to fundraise legally through a special fund set up in the
Foundation, and made it easier to get approvals to carry out the Walk. Being
strategic meant choosing a “non-sensitive” area outside of Beijing’s
administrative borders. The Jinshanling Great Wall was chosen because it was
close to Beijing but part of Chengde city’s administration.
The participants
in the Walk this year were a diverse and colorful bunch. They included
foreigners and Chinese, children and the elderly, gay and straight, the healthy
and those infected with AIDS, and one person dressed as a bright blue condom.
Some dressed up in flamboyant outfits, while others waved China AIDS Walk flags
and banners. Some of the younger walkers like Howard dashed up the steep steps
leading to the towers while others took their time, taking in the view of the
Wall as it snaked its way up and down the spines of the distant hills. There
were even small events held at some of the watchtowers, such as a Beijing opera
performance, and “Free Hugs” for those infected with AIDS.
At the end of
the walk, some of the participants, including the man-sized blue condom,
gathered on a makeshift stage to do a line dance to pop music. As we watched
the dance, one of the walkers summed up the day when he said, “How many times
do you see this happen in China?”
(This article was also posted to the China Development Brief website.)
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