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December 12, 2006
Dear Friends and Family of A&PI Wellness Center,
As the new executive director of Asian & Pacific Islander
Wellness Center, I am honored to be writing to you, one of
the most valuable assets of our organization. I am writing
to ask that you consider a year-end donation to A&PI
Wellness Center.
We are living in a war-obsessed, continually challenging
political climate. A&PI Wellness Center has persisted
to design model HIV programs despite ongoing funding cuts
and an abstinence-only edict from our federal leaders for
the past six years. Private institutional funders have told
me that HIV is not their focus anymore. As we look ahead,
we know that federal HIV funding will continue to be slashed.
San Francisco is projected to see over $10 million of HIV
funding cuts in the next few years. This will have serious
effect on our services if we don’t plan now.
I know that we can plan, act, and positively alter the course
of this epidemic. We can toss the government-imposed medical
model for addressing HIV up into the air, knead it with our
collective hands, and let it transform and rise into a competent,
accessible, life-saving and life-affirming, holistic model
of health and wellness for A&PIs living with HIV, for
those at-risk for HIV, and for all of our family and community.
We have been doing this at A&PI Wellness Center for 20
years, turning hope into achievable and formidable realities.
The enclosed 2006 Highlights provides a few examples.
Your ongoing financial support is critical to sustaining
A&PI Wellness Center’s indispensable, life-saving
work as we enter our third decade of serving the community.
I share with you a quote by AIDS activist Vito Russo that
I have always held close to my heart. In 1988, he said:
AIDS is a test of who we are as a people… Remember
that someday the AIDS crisis will be over. And when that
day has come and gone there will be people alive on this
earth—gay and straight people, Black people and white
people, men and women—who will hear the story that
once there was a terrible disease, and that a group of people
stood up and fought and in some cases died so that others
might live and be free.
This quote is as relevant now as it was then. I urge you
to stay in this fight with us, supporting our belief that
life and freedom and health are worth fighting for and investing
in. As 2006 comes to a close, I ask that you again invest
in A&PI Wellness Center, in whatever amount is most meaningful
to you.*
From the bottom of my soul and heart, I thank you for your
support. And, I wish a most safe and joyous holiday season
and New Year to you and your family. I promise to be in touch
again very soon!
With hope and joy,

Lance Toma, LCSW
Executive Director
* You can make a secure
donation on our website. Also, two
of our strongest supporters, Timothy C. Wu and James C. Hormel,
have awarded us a “Challenge
Grant” of $10,000,
contingent on us raising $20,000 in new donor giving! Mr.
Wu and Mr. Hormel will match 1 dollar for every 2 dollars
received from March 15, 2006 through December 31, 2006, of
most non-event related donations above what you gave in the
past.
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