The National Minority AIDS Council's mission was "raising awareness of the impact of HIV/AIDS among minorities," when it started in 1987, in Washington, D.C. Since then it has progressed and has changed its mission twice.
In 1989, NMAC began working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) . This effort was to help build HIV/AIDS services in minority neighborhoods. The new combination changed the mission from "raising awareness of the impact of HIV/AIDS among minorities," to" building leadership within communities to address the challenges of HIV/AIDS". At the 2011 U.S. Conference of AIDS, held in Chicago, their new mission became "to develop leadership in communities of color to END the AIDS epidemic."
In 1986 the American Public Health Association had its first AIDS workshop, without inviting any minorities to speak on its panel. During that time Craig Harris, a gay Black man and one of the founders of NMAC, walked to the stage shouting, "I WILL BE HEARD." He took the microphone from Dr. Merv Silverman, the San Francisco Health Commissioner at the time.
As a result of the APHA not having people of color on the panel, NMAC was started in 1987 by Paul Kawata, Gil Gerard, Calu Lester, Don Edwards, Timm Offutt, Norm Nickens, Craig Harris, Carl Bean, Suki Ports,Marie St.-Cyr and Sandra McDonald. Although Kawata has been the executive director of NMAC for 23 years, he is not the founding executive director of the agency.
"One thing that I always like to do is recognize that I am not the founding executive director of the agency," said Kawata. "The founding executive director was a man named Don Edwards, and as an organization we will always owe a great debt to him."
Edwards did two things while he was executive director. His first responsibility was to define a mission, determine what they wanted to do and the prioritize for the group of activists who came together to form NMAC. The second thing was to talk with their constituents to find out what was expected and desired from them. They wanted a voice in Washington to represent their issues with congress and administration, and they wanted an organization and assistance.
Today NMAC is a trading organization that works with and represents approximately 3,000 faith-and-community-based organizations across the United States, providing services and prevention efforts to communities of color. Members include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) and the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.
Edwards was executive director from 1987 to 1989. During that time, he worked on the mission and priorities of the organization. NMAC began spreading the word about how hard minority communities were hit with HIV/AIDS. They met with U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop to discuss this matter. Koop, who had planned to be there 15 minutes, listened for two-and-a-half hours. Materials, prepared with NMAC input and sanctioned by Koop, joined the U.S. Census and tax forms as the only publications mailed out to every address in the United States.
NMAC launched their Live Long Sugar Campaign with Patti LaBelle in 1987. The campaign gave awareness to minorities living with HIV/AIDS about Pneumocystis carnii pneumonia ( PNP ) , which was the largest killer of people living with AIDS in America. During the photo shoot with Patti LaBelle, she kept saying "Live long, sugar."
Daniel Montoya, deputy executive director of NMAC, said "one of the things early on in the epidemic was that in order to address what was going on you need to first understand and educate yourself and build and develop leadership in terms of what was going on so that you can actually do what you needed to do in your particular locale.
"The organization felt the best thing they could do in terms with working with communities of color is to really continue to make sure that it continues. So the whole effort behind our mission is that any work that we do, the underlying priority is how we are developing leadership. Everything we do has to be taken through that lens."
Montoya elaborates: "We make sure we are keeping in step with the mission. For example, with the programmatic side we develop specific programs that tailor to gay African American males."
The program Montoya is referring to is the Men's Institute of Leadership Excellence and Service. MILES is a leadership program which targets gay Black men and Black bisexual men. It is a two-day curriculum which helps these men gain more knowledge on leadership for staff in community-based organizations ( CBOs ) . MILES also focuses on "organization, development and sustainability … workforce development, program collaboration service integration and evaluation," according to NMAC's Website.
Another program is called the capacity building assistance ( CBA ) services for CBOs, which is funded by the Centers for Disease and Control. It aides "organizational infrastructure and program sustainability ( OIPS ) topics," relating to strengthening HIV services. Topics are:
— CBO Assessment
— Fiscal Management
— Resource Development
— Grant Writing/Proposal Development
— Board Development
— Strategic Planning
— Personnel Management
— Program Development
— Program Evaluation
— Program Marketing
— Leadership Development
— Information Technology Development
The Minority Serving Institutions ( MSI ) HIV/AIDS Initiative is another program from NMAC. It is sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of HIV/AIDS Policy ( OHAP ) . MSI serves a variety of people such as African-Americans, Latinos, Asian Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. They compete for grants so they can partake in what the NMAC website calls a "demonstration project." NMAC has training in these categories:
— Peer Education
— Program Implementation
— Program Sustainability
— HIV 101
— Needs Assessment
— Social Media
— Program Evaluation
There were some dark days in the beginning NMAC.
"We are a generation of gay men and lesbians who were caught up in the middle of this epidemic who I think walked away from it very broken and I don't think we realized how broken we were because it was just so overwhelming and impossible to describe to anyone else," said Kawata. Kawata describes these days, the 1980s and early '90s, as "the darkest days of the movement."
"You see a lot of our regular AIDS doctors now addicted to crystal [ meth ] and losing everything. And I absolutely know that part of what had happened was what they saw in the height of the epidemic," Kawata said.
Kawata flashed back to Timm Offutt. "This is a memory that really sticks out," he said. "We did board meetings around him because he wanted to be included in the meetings. It was the craziness and the loving that we had that we sat around his hospital bed trying to do business, trying to say goodbye and letting him know how much we loved him."
Offutt was not only one of the founding members of NMAC but was also the first executive director of the Kupona Network, located in Chicago. The network was an organization for African-Americans coping with HIV/AIDS.
"I think so often we only remember what happened in the last couple of years," Kawata said. "And we forget the people who were there in the early days who were fighting when there was absolutely nothing. And so I always try to bring up Timm's name when I'm in Chicago and other founder's names in other cities who are no longer with us, or who we lost along the way. I think partially when you're talking to old timers like me who've been there since the beginning, we tend to rap along with our stories because we want our history to be remembered and we want ... these individuals who are forgotten to be recalled."
For more information see www.nmac.org or call 202- 483-6622.
This story is part of the Local Reporting Initiative, supported in part by The Chicago Community Trust.
