Six More Weeks of Winter, C2PLA Continues to Move Forward

Greetings C2PLA Members and Supporters, 

I hope this email finds you well despite the fact that  Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today which according to folklore means we  are  in store for six more weeks of Winter.  Although I don’t think this applies  to  us here in Southern California since we have some of the best weather in the 
 country all year long.  I know this is why is many of us choose to live here.   

As we enter the second month of 2012, I wanted to thank you again for your continued work in helping our coalition achieve its mission of  mobilizing the community and creating structural change to reduce HIV/AIDS  among young gay and bisexual men of color. Our coalition is so much
stronger  because of the work you all contribute.      

We’ve had a very busy year so far.  All four of our subcommittees (Schools, Care and Testing, Homeless and Runaway Youth, Sustainability) have met, we’ve submitted our additional paper and pen  questions for our Acasi survey, and we’ve been able to analyze the data from
our  healthy coalition questionnaires that we administered in December.  

 We are very excited to share this information with you at  our  upcoming working group meeting and even more excited to hear about the work  you  are doing at your individual agencies.   Our first working group meeting of the year is scheduled for Friday February 24, 2012 from 12pm to 3pmat  Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Division of Adolescent Medicine.  We are located at 5000 Sunset Blvd. 4th floor,
Los Angeles CA  90027. Please  note this is not the main hospital address, this location is inside of the  Citibank building.
  
If you are able to attend please RSVP using the following link: http://tinyurl.com/c2pla-meeting no later than 5pm on Wednesday February 22, 2012.  This will ensure we have accurate headcount for food.
  
 You will find the meeting  notes from our last working group meeting which was our December
holiday  retreat under our Get Involved page.  Additionally all past meeting minutes can be found there as well.  

Lastly, we’ve streamlined communication for community and event announcements with our new Google Groups   platform.  Here you can submit agency announcements, job openings, relevant  published articles, etc.   If you haven’t already joined we’ve attached the instruction sheet to this email.  To those members who have joined and aren’t able to change or modify their delivery settings please email me so we can look  at your settings and make sure you are setup on your desired choice.   
 
Google Groups allows members to   choose how many emails they receive per day and when.  In the past many of you  said you received too many emails, this was an agreed upon solution.  We hope 
this new system has been helpful.   

Reminder February 7th in National Black  HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.  If you or your agency is doing anything to observe this  day, please forward me the information so I can share with the larger group.  
  
I look forward to seeing you all later this month.  
  
Warm Regards,
 Milton Smith
 Project Director
 Connect To Protect Los Angeles (C2PLA)