Asia Catalyst Annual Report 2015 | Page 4

2 THANK YOU FOR SHARING 2015 WITH US Dear Friends, BUILDING STRONGER CIVIL SOCIETY ADVANCING THE RIGHT TO HEALTH A civil society leader gives a presentation at an Asia Catalyst workshop in Beijing. Asia Catalyst photo, 2015. A SIA CATALYST builds strong civil society and advances the right to health for marginalized groups in Asia. We train community-based organizations (CBOs) to meet high standards of effective and democratic governance, to establish a stable foundation for future growth, and to conduct rigorous human rights research and advocacy. We are an independent organization that places the needs of marginalized communities at the center of national, regional, and international policy making. Across Asia, marginalized communities face serious challenges in accessing and protecting a broad array of human rights. They are often without the skills or resources to address systemic or acute abuses. Asia Catalyst addresses these challenges through rigorous and tailored capacity building, research, and advocacy support to emerging civil society leaders and organizations in the region. Graduates of Asia Catalyst’s intensive tailored programming are achieving substantive advocacy gains on behalf of their communities. Our reports and expertise are regularly cited in the international press, including articles and citations on the front page of The New York Times, and in the South China Morning Post, The Guardian, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Kennedy LGBTQ Policy Journal, and the prestigious Lancet medical journal. Asia Catalyst was incorporated on November 28, 2006 and received 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit status in the United States of America on July 25, 2007. On April 23, 2015, Asia Catalyst was registered as a company in Hong Kong. 2 This year, Asia Catalyst strengthened and significantly expanded our partnerships and programming in Southeast Asia, while continuing our core capacity building and high quality advocacy work in China. We also invested in new expert staff and resources to support our regional expansion, and now have a team of twelve people working across three offices in New York, Beijing, and Bangkok. We are so proud to have established ourselves in Bangkok, a major strategic goal of the organization. The Bangkok office will increase our access to policy and decision making in the region, as well as provide a much more convenient and cost-effective venue for our programming in Southeast Asia. This year, we also brought on full-time Monitoring and Evaluation capacity; an integral part of ensuring Asia Catalyst’s effective and high quality programming. Our Regional Rights Training program kicked off at the beginning of the year. Partners from Cambodia, China, Myanmar, and Viet Nam wer HX