The drizzling rain a few days ago gave Beijing a chill, and the sprouting leaves decided to shrink back into the soil.  Thankfully with nature’s affection, the 30^th brought brilliant sunshine that signifies the beautiful spring has finally arrived.

The Working Group of MSM Movement of Beijing’s third “AIDS Awareness Participatory Training Session” went on as planned.  This time, we have mainly invited the various hardworking brother groups NGO volunteers in the field of MSM.  The organizations that have signed up included Hong Kong’s Chi Heng Foundation’s Beijing Working Group, Beijing Peace Working Group, Jing Jing Tong Xin Working Group, Tong Chuang Hui QQ Group, UNDP and some charitable personnel who are passionate about gay issues.  Due to the overwhelming participation by the organizations, some sent more members than the number they registered for.  There were times when the number of people present reached a staggering 57, a great turnout for this training session.

The topics for the morning and afternoon sessions were divided clearly for this training session.  The morning discussion focused on infectious diseases, sex, and topics on prevention.  At the same time, everyone shared information about communication skills and techniques with external parties.  The afternoon session discussion turned to the topics on the livelihood of gay community including; self-approval and ‘form marriage’ (same sex marriage which is not legally recognised yet), which led to the related legal issues.  Moreover, the afternoon session added another item which was the real-life sharing of two guests whom we have invited.  One is a senior “revolutionary gay man” who shared stories about the ups and downs of his life while the other is a volunteer from one of the working groups who has plans on choosing ‘form marriage’.  Through the guests’ sharing of their personal lives, everyone was led to think about the practical, real and quite thorny legal problems.  The whole discussion encouraged active participation and, at different levels, everyone obtained the knowledge and information that they hoped to gain.

The training session invited two experts.  One is someone with a wealth of experience in the area of pushing for AIDS prevention among the MSM population, Mr Hu.  Another is Legal Counsel Zhang with bountiful case experiences.  At the same time, Mr Zheng from China Association of STD/AIDS Prevention and Control came to conduct this training.  We thank all the experts for attending and for their suggestions.  We hope that there will be more exchange and collaboration in the future.

After the training session, a few of the Working Group members collected feedback and understood the participants’ hopes and experience of this training session.  Almost 100% of the participants gave this training session their approval and acknowledged the value of it.  Ten percent of participants felt that the event hall appeared somewhat messy due to the large number of people present.  Thirty percent of participants hoped that such activities could be carried out on a regular basis.  Twenty percent of the guests stated that they hoped this training could be opened up to more people.  Ninety five percent of the group expressed their acceptance, approval and gave thanks to the host and experts.  We thank everyone for your support!

After this training session, our group’s training activities have reached an end.  With a short period of adjustment, we hope to have more opportunities to work with government organizations and strive towards our common goal of building up brother groups in NGOs!

* Translated by CHAIN
  Translator: Shuxin