In March 2007, in recognition of the important role that the Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment (CAAT) has been playing in facilitating service and treatment access for marginalized and newcomer PHAs, CAAT received operational funding from the AIDS Bureau of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
Since then CAAT has engaged in an intensive organizational development process to formalize its partnership and governance structure to enhance clarity and accountability to all its stakeholders. With the assistance from consultant John Miller from the Ontario Organization Development Program (OODP), the interim steering committee members of CAAT reviewed different options and models before coming up with our own version of partnership and governance model that we believed is most conducive to CAAT achieving its mandate of community development and service coordination.
On February 14th, 2008, the CAAT governance model as drafted by the Partnership Committee was officially approved at our general members’ meeting. Key features of the CAAT governance model included a Steering Committee that would be made up of a majority of community members and aim to maximize Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GIPA) from our target (ethno-racial, newcomer) communities. On March 19th 2008, CAAT held our first ever official Annual General Membership Meeting at the 519 Church Community Centre. 35 agency and individual members were present and the first official CAAT Steering Committee was elected.
CAAT is excited to pull together a steering committee made up of a wonderful group of dedicated, committed and self-motivated members of our diverse communities. These members represented both their communities and agencies in various capacities.
The 2008-2009 CAAT Steering Committee members are: (organization names are only listed for steering committee members elected as official organizational representatives)
- Alan Li (Co –chair)
- Fanta Ongoiba (Co- chair) (Africans in Partnerships Against AIDS)
- Andre Ceranto (Secretary)
- Devica Hintzen
- Kaddu Justine (Voices of Positive Women)
- Marvelous Muchenje
- Devan Nambiar
- Suzanne Paddock (Toronto PWA Foundation)
- Claudette Samuels
- Noulmook Sutdhibhasilp (Asian Community AIDS Services)
- Shannon Ryan (Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention)
- Derek Yee