TTAG: The Work

It's been less than a week since I began my work with TTAG. I've spent much of the last few days immersing myself in the organization's background -- reading funding proposals, talking with Karyn and Ott (the co-founders) about organizational challenges, observing a recently formed Community Advisory Group at HIV-NAT at the Thai Red Cross, whose purpose is to provide a voice for community representatives and advocates in the decision-making regarding clinical trials and other research taking place in Thailand. While there are subtle cultural differences in the way that work takes place, I'm more impressed by how universal the challenges are of making a place for the community at the decision-making tables. The advocates here are seasoned, savvy, and well connected internationally, so even the alphabet soup of acronyms of partner organizations are familiar -- GMHC, Doctors without Borders, USAID, CDC, WHO, etc. There seems more at stake when you're talking about clinical trials being conducted in your country by US pharmaceutical companies without guarantees that the Thai government will have the right to produce the drugs for their own markets. Yet much of the dialogue and context in which TTAG operates is not dramatically different from that of US advocates operating within the context of the Bush Administration.

TTAG is, itself, an interesting marriage of East and West -- Karyn, a bilingual international human rights advocate from New York working side by side with Ott, an HIV positive, former IV drug user, and community activist. They've used an incredibly effective strategy of building international networks to move both the local policy agenda, as well as bring the voice of PLWHA to the international policy conversations. The international nature of their work means that they work literally day and night -- on the phone with the US, Australia, Canada and Europe in the early morning and late at night, in meetings and doing their work here in Thailand the rest of the time. Their powerful alliance has brought them much acclaim and attention; critical for giving their work visibility but also becoming a challenge to manage. Requests for visits, articles and speeches come in every day, while the work on the ground here in Thailand still requires their political acumen to move forward. The small staff needs much support, and Ott and Karyn need help figuring out how to create an organization that doesn't demand so much of them. It is, for this, Ott says, that I am here, to find the miracle that will allow him to attend to the international work and not worry that things aren't going well in their local peer leadership and community building efforts. To find a way that the work at which he and Karyn have been so successful will not compromise their health. We've joked that my MOU with TTAG didn't promise miracles. So now begin the hard conversations to see what can be done, little by little, to build an organization that is not so dependent on its founders, and whose work can flourish and be sustained.