National AIDS Trust

First off, somehow I forgot to write about the guided walk of the Thames that we did Friday night. It was so nice. The tour guide was great & very knowledgable. There was a lot of Shakespeare stuff as well as the millenium projects & the London Bridge -- which is actually quite the let down. Apparently Tower Bridge is the exciting one, so I'm going to have to see that sometime. A few of us were going to go see it right after the walk, but couldn't figure out how to get there. Yesterday I went to Camden Market with a few of the girls. It was crazy & fantastic. I bought some cheap things, mostly scarves.

Today was my first day on the job. I'm working at National AIDS Trust. Even though there are only 16 staff members, it's one of the most important HIV organizations doing policy work. I'm on the policy & campaigns team & I'll be working on immigration & asylum. Basically I'll be doing lots of research, because they don't have much information on the subject. I'll specifically be looking at the right to housing & the right to work, how they influence HIV, etc. The two big projects I have are (1) generating a document for internal use & presenting information to the team on that as well as suggesting a course of actiong, be it publishing something for public use, holding a conference, whatever; (2) putting stuff up on the website about immigration & asylum. So you'll be able to see some of my work eventually.

I'll also be picking up smaller tasks. Today I started on a project that my supervisor's supervisor gave me. A few months back another HIV organization folded & didn't get around to creating/publishing a report or holding a conference that they had on tab. Another HIV organization took the conference & NAT took the report. Eleanor created the report & now it's ready to be send out, but the organization, for whatever reason, didn't have contact information for the 50 or so organizations the repord had to go out to. So today I looked up the contact information for them all & sent out the report. There are a handful of organizations that are tricky & I'll have to call around on Wednesday, but Joe was surprised that I pretty much finished it before the end of the day. I think it was supposed to be for the better part of the week. Now I'll be starting my research when I go back on Wednesday.

Tomorrow I have the day off since I have class in the morning. I have some errands to run before & after class, then I'll probably hit up a museum. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the British Museum again. There are other museums I want to see, but I'll probably save them for weekends since they aren't just around the corner! Plus it's supposed to be gross out -- up to 3 inches of rain & really windy. I'd rather be close by & not trekking around the city.