spreading the solution
by annie kim noguchiFrom a decal to a nation-wide campaign, Team HBV talks about its rapid growth
February 2005. Fifteen students start the Jade Ribbon Campaign DeCal, dedicated to the awareness and prevention of Hepatitis B and liver cancer.
April 2005. The Jade Ribbon Campaign raises $50,000 in a single fundraising event to fund medical missions to China.
September 2008. Three and a half years later, the Jade Ribbon Campaign has evolved into Team HBV and now operates at a national level with chapters across the United States at UC Berkeley, Harvard, Duke, Cornell, and UC Davis.
How did a DeCal of fifteen students develop into a national campaign with projects that include grant-writing, political advocacy, media production, and public health research?
Often, we talk about the programming or events that organizations sponsor, or the achievements organizations have made. Rarely, however, do we ever hear the inside details about how to structure and run a successful organization. As important as the issues and causes are, a strong organization is also needed in order to advocate for these causes. Denis Lam, the original founder of the Jade Ribbon Campaign DeCal and Team HBV National, tells hardboiled how to create this.
When and how did you begin to expand beyond UC Berkeley?
Team HBV at UC Berkeley began as the “Jade Ribbon Campaign DeCal” which David Chao (Cal Alumnus) and I started in Spring 2005. A year later, I got in touch with my colleagues Amanda Wong (Cornell) and Jian Lin (Duke) who used to intern at the Asian Liver Center and we formulated the idea of creating official ALC chapters at colleges nationwide to address the hep B issue. That sounded like money so with a bit of blood and sweat and working with our University Administration and Colleges, it became reality soon after.
Why was it important for Team HBV to expand to a national level?
Expanding to a national level was a vision the original founders had since Day One. As with any successful movement or campaign, expanding the message beyond borders and other forms of social constructs is the natural result of coalition building efforts. Team HBV’s vision is to have college students nationwide come together to raise their voices about the often-overlooked issue of hepatitis B and liver cancer endemic to ethnic minority communities in their own campus and local communities, their own state, their nation, and their world - in that order.
What are your ultimate goals, both terms of your campaigns and in terms of the organization and future of Team HBV?
To eradicate Hepatitis B (HBV) worldwide. And I’m confident we can see this happening within our lifetimes - how exciting is that?
A vaccine that can prevent uninfected people from getting HBV has already existed for over 20 years. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the U.S. started making newborn HBV vaccinations mandatory. But vaccination policies alone won’t do the trick. Education and testing (which we’re strong advocates of) must also be emphasized to address the 400 million chronic carriers in the world that have already been infected - once tested, an infected individual will not only be able to receive care and treatment that will allow them to retain normal lives, but will also end one strand of the disease from being passed on to others.
What are some of the obstacles that you’ve faced or are still facing in your expansion?
Like many other student groups, the largest barrier to our development is the flux of students coming and going each semester. All of us are constantly trying new strategies each semester to address this issue and increase our membership and volunteer base.
But one thing in particular I’ve realized is that the success of an organization SHOULD NOT be defined by the NUMBER OF MEMBERS they have, especially if the organization is a service or advocacy based organization.
What is your advice to other student organizations who hope to expand and have an impact at the statewide or national level?
Of course, any organization needs a core officer staff to function, but when building a large member base becomes the number one priority for an organization, the organization may be distracted from its actual mission and be counterproductive.
For instance, the mission of Team HBV is to address the issue of Hep B and our vision is to do that through many small outreach projects, events, and/or larger programs such as Cal Hep B Free. Given the limited time and resources all of us have, we would not have been able to get anything done if we were to only focus on recruitment. Rather, by focusing on the tasks that we will do each semester and ensuring that tasks are delegated to the core staff to coordinate the logistics, we then go out to the Cal community, our volunteer email lists, Community Partners, DeCal class to recruit volunteers. And lastly, everyone loves to be appreciated and rewarded - so organizations should not forget those that have done great things for them!
Any more tips on how to create and sustain a successful organization?
1) Clear Mission and Baby Steps: Rather than doing a million things at once, have the organization focus on one or two projects at a time. These projects can later become a subset of a larger project or they can evolve to become actual programs themselves! I’d advise the group to try small and medium magnitude projects first - going for the big fish at first will really maximize the chances of failure - after that it’s hard to pick up momentum again especially when team members become disillusioned with the results. On the other hand, having small specific projects will allow everyone to be on the same page and prevents confusion when it comes to recruitment of new members.
2) Specific Objectives: Once the group has decided on the projects with specific objectives, a good place to start is to start forming partnerships with other entities on campus. This is actually what I did with Cal Hep B Free. Toward the end of last semester, I basically started pitching my vision and Cal Hep B Free campaign plan to various folks in the ASUC, ASUC Auxiliary, Tang Center, Berkeley Innovation, etc. and slowly people came on-board when they realize what they’re taking part in is a worthy cause. The result is what you see today...with more to come!
3) Multifaceted Approach: What Team HBV is trying to address is pretty specific in scope (Hep B) but its ramifications affect a large community (APIs in particular). The best lesson I’ve learned working with Team HBV is that social issues need to have multifaceted approaches to draw a broad support and maximize impact. For instance, Cal Hep B Free Campaign does not only focus on the academic portion of the issues such as the epidemiology and virology behind Hep B, but we try to appeal to other students as well by emphasizing advocacy work, grant-writing opportunities, fundraising, marketing, etc. In short, you can view Cal Hep B Free as a non-profit startup company with many products it wants to sell to the campus to achieve our “B SMART, B TESTED, B FREE!” objectives.
4) Start A DeCal: If a group would like to quickly spread a worthy message and expand its member base - start a DeCal! Students get rewarded for their time with academic units. And also, DeCals get access to more resources. I’ll definitely accredit the DeCal program for making Team HBV at UCB possible today.
Any last words?
You need motivation (to get things done) and responsibility (to get things done right). We try to inspire new recruits about a worthy cause and empower them by showing them that their time and efforts can actually create real, visible change they can see at UC Berkeley.