Dear colleagues and friends: Following the recent announcement about the newly formed Civil Society Coalition on HIV/AIDS UNGASS (which is the transformation of the UNGASS Civil Society Steering Committee), I would like to provide you with more information about the work of the Coalition and about options for getting involved. Recicipients of the original announcement have either been part of one of the Working Groups of the original Civil Society Steering Committee, they are/were engaged in monitoring projects on the implementation of the UNGASS DoC (as a researcher, advisor, supporter, etc), or have expressed an interest already in being involved (for example, in connection with the universal access process). Anyone can be part of the Coalition, which is open to all civil society organizations (CSOs) that are committed to and fully support full implementation of the DoC; and are also committed to the principle of non-discrimination with regard to people living with HIV/AIDS and all groups most vulnerable to the epidemic. To get involved, CSOs that meet these criteria are encouraged to self nominate to join one or more of the Coalition?s three working groups (WGs) according to your own interests and strengths. The Working Groups are focused on: - WGI: International level activities: UNGASS Review Meeting (New York), which overall objective is to encourage facilitate and support active civil society participation in the UNGASS Review Meeting in New York. - WGII: National-level activities around HIV/AIDS UNGASS, which overall objective is to ensure that national level priorities and output (including those articulated by monitoring projects) are fed into international processes. Additionally, this WG will also mobilize CSOs to be engaged and linked to consultations on Universal Access process and other such opportunities - WGIII: Communications and information dissemination: which main objectives are to promote transparency and accountability of the Coalition and Working Groups through timely and open distribution of information and ensure broad dissemination of new/relevant UNGASS-related information resources as they become available (e.g., announcements, sessions and meeting agendas, deadlines etc) in particular about opportunities for CSO participation in UNGASS, including through listserves and the www.ungasshiv.org website. For the moment, I am the interim chair of working group II (national level processes and activities) and I would like to invite you to join working group II. In an effort to include more people, this message will be translated into Spanish and I will try to facilitate a process to include Spanish speaking individuals and organizations. You can sign-on sending an email to ungass@icaso.org (subject line: join WG II). You will receive confirmation of your request and an update of the composition of the group. WG will be receiving request to join up until the General Assembly (in May). Once this WG has a representative number of members, the working group will choose a co-chair. Please let me know if we can provide any further information or other help. For a full description of the Coalition, including how it came about, and other background documents on UNGASS, please go to www.ungasshiv.org or let me know and I can send all the documents. Please forward this announcement to your colleagues that may be interested in the work of the Coalition.