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.