Global Weekly Update October 4, 2010

Join Our Conference Call This Saturday!

Join us Saturday, October 9, at 2:00 pm ET for our exciting monthly conference call. This month’s speaker will be Congressman Pete Stark (D-CA), and we’ll be discussing the currency transaction levy’s powerful potential to help us achieve our global health objectives.

Before or after the call, take time to update your group’s accomplishments. Be sure to full out your RC’s reporting form and make sure to report on any meetings your group has had with members of Congress. Use the Group Report (look at the Global Group Resources section) and the Lobby Reporting forms to help you. These reports give us information for many important uses, including providing date for our quarterly “momentum” updates to you.

Fall Fundraising Update

Thanks to all who have decided to roll up your sleeves and participate in fall fundraising! Whether you are hosting an event, conducting a local “Friends and Family Campaign,” or both, we are deeply grateful for your commitment to changing and saving lives. (You may be inspired by knowing that your own global regional coordinators have personally pledged to raise at least $8450!)

Please read our blog posting to learn more about our efforts this fall and how you can participate.

Again, thank you so much for keeping RESULTS strong!

Use the Election Cycle to Educate on Our Issues

This October, Congress is in recess and all members are back home campaigning and holding town  halls, listening sessions, and meetings. Take advantage of this opportunity to request a meeting with your member of Congress and attend town halls sessions. These are times you can bring up our issues in a strategic way. And don’t forget to do the same for the challenger! Consider joining our upcoming training call, “Pre-election Bird-dogging: Getting Our Issues on the Radar,” to be held at 9:00 pm ET on Wednesday, October 13. The call-in number is (712) 432-3100, passcode 887871. Kaytee Riek of HealthGap will be with us to talk about great techniques that will be useful as you attend town hall meetings and seek to get our issues talked about as the election approaches. You are also invited to check out our own best practices on this very topic.

As you attend town halls and candidate forums, ask incumbents (and hopefuls) to cosponsor a bill, thank them for their efforts, ask them their plans, thoughts on our issues . . . the options are endless. Tailor your efforts to your member, e.g.:

Is the race a close one?

Is a public question or challenge the best? What about a “thank you” in conjunction with a question?

Is a meeting the best opportunity to really delve deep into the issues?

How should you frame your question/comment to achieve your goals?

Please contact the John, Jen, Crickett, Ken, or Lisa to help think through your strategy!

Bring Your TB Advocacy to the Next Level — Apply for a World AIDS Day Mini-Grant!

World AIDS Day (WAD) is December 1. To help highlight the deadly synergy between TB and HIV, RESULTS Educational Fund (REF) is offering RESULTS grassroots groups the opportunity to undertake TB advocacy activities for WAD 2010 and beyond that might not be possible without support funding. Activities can fall between September 1 and December 31, 2010. We are making funds available, through a competitive grant application process, for WAD events, and TB awareness building in your communities. These mini-grants are funded through REF’s ACTION project.

Visit our 2010 World AIDS Day page for a link to the application.

Ideas Types of Activities — Be Creative!

• Organize a community panel discussion on TB-HIV co-infection and invite the media, community members, and members of Congress.
• Reach out to local HIV/AIDS groups to build coalition support around events that could highlight TB-HIV.
• Organize a conference call for journalists with local or state TB experts (e.g. a state TB controller).
• Hold a screening and discussion of a TB-HIV related film.
• Research the history of TB in your community and do a public art show, display, discussion or other community event to bring attention to it and the current state of affairs of TB in the world.
• Work with your local opera on their production of La Boheme or La Traviata and make the connection to TB.
• Organize a book club around an appropriate TB related book.
• Identify and work with one or more TB patients to help them become advocates. Find opportunities for them to write and be published, speak out publicly, speak anonymously (on a radio program for example).
• Create an event — a rally, a walk, a candlelight vigil — that brings media attention to TB.

Finally, even as these banks grow and restructure, they must also do more to address twenty-first century challenges. This includes food security and empowering women, but especially the urgent and fundamentally linked challenges of climate change and energy poverty. As we invest limited public resources, we have to ensure that these banks support our clean energy and climate priorities.

                 — Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on capital increases for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) on Wednesday, September 15, 2010

October: Congressional recess

October 13: Pre-election Bird-dogging Training Call: Getting Our Issues on the Radar, 9 pm ET. (712) 432-3100, passcode 887871. Kaytee Riek of HealthGap will be with us to talk about great techniques, useful as you attend town hall meetings and seek to get our issues talked about in the run-up to the election!

October 13, 27; Nov. 3 (date correction): New Activist Orientation. (712) 432-3100, passcode: 761262. Contact Ken Patterson or Lisa Marchal for more details.

October–December: Fall fundraising campaign.

December 1: World AIDS Day. Interested in an event to raise awareness about TB-HIV coinfection? Think of all the possibilities, and then apply for a mini-grant to help your event take off!

Upcoming Fall Fundraisers

• October 12: RESULTS Des Moines
• October 16: RESULTS Santa Fe
• November 7: RESULTS Columbus
• December 5: RESULTS Chicago
• December 9: RESULTS in DC

Other Dates

September–November: We’ll be working to identify U.S. TB patient advocates who can speak powerfully about their experience with TB to make it real for our communities.

January 2010: Media training for TB Controllers and grassroots activists.

June 19–21: RESULTS International Conference in Washington, D.C.