South Carolina HIV Campaign
a campaign to keep SC Legislators informed about HIV issues
About
Our mission is to keep South Carolina Legislators informed about the needs and concerns of HIV positive citizens, along with information about prevention and education programs that can help other citizens to not get infected by HIV. Our goal is to write, and encourage others to write, letters every month, thereby keeping a steady stream of information and citizen concern flowing to our congressmen each month.

Each month several sample letters, written with a specific theme, will be provided. We encourage our volunteers to hand-write these letters for the most impact; but will accept printed letters just signed and dated. These letters will be collected and then mailed to either the congressmen specified by the signer or to congressmen from our geographic area or congressmen who are on specific committees that can influence state policy regarding HIV funding, prevention, and education.

Hopefully this website will make it easy to coordinate our letters and volunteers, while keeping everyone informed of the issues of greatest concern. This site will store your personal information (in a "cookie" on your system only) to make formulating the letters easy, a form to help you suggest others who might also like to help, and a form for you to send suggestions about future letters, website improvements, and HIV-related issues that you think we should focus on. As we are in this together to help ourselves, our friends and our family who are infected with HIV and struggling to keep competent medical care, we deeply value your input into helping us.

Thank you for all your help and assistance, now and in the months as we go forward.

-- Michael Bivens, client and volunteer with Catawba Care
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Using this Site
Hopefully you'll find this site easy to use to help write your letters for our monthly campaigns.
 
  Quick Tips to get started:
1) Start off by filling in some personal information in the Check/Save Your Data section. This information will then be automatically filled into all the other forms making everything a lot easier for you each time you vist.
2) You'll probably need to use the Find Your Congressman section to figure out who your Legislators are and to fill in that information.
3) Then go to the Create-a-Letter section, choose a greeting, choose a pre-written letter, click preview, and then click print. It's that easy!
4) Of course, you can just sign the printed letter, but to get the most bang for the buck for your letter, we suggest that you hand-write your letter using the print-out as the template
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Sign Up for Updates
If you'd like to receive timely updates about when new letters have been added to the site or when it's time for action, please enter your name and email address to subscribe to our update list. You can unsubscribe anytime by entering your email only and checking Unsubscribe
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Issues
Under each of the Campaigns, click on any of the Issues to learn more about the situation  - and the solutions!
Current Issues
Campaign #100 January/Week Two Letters: 101, 102, 103
Campaign #200 February/Week Two Letters:
Under Construction!
We are currently working on our first campaign
Previous Issues
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Current Letters
Below, you can preview the current letters that we are working on to send to our Legislators.
Click the "Next Letter" button to cycle through this campaign's letters.
Campaign Date Letters
No. Title
 
Feel free to use the "Create-a-Letter" section below to use one of this month's campaign letters putting this text together with the correct greetings and more comments. Afterwards you can print out your letter to sign, or better yet, hand-print the letter for maximum effect.
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Create-a-Letter
Using this handy template, create a letter to print and sign,
or better yet, print out and then handwrite to have the most impact on the Legislator.
1) Make sure to Find Your Congressman and store that data.
2) Make sure to Save Your Data or enter it here.
Your Name
Your Address
 
City State
  Zip Code-
Your Email
  Phone
Now, choose a greeting and closing, along with the message and your optional comment
3) Choose a salutation
4) Pick the Recipient
5) Choose the body
   
 
6) Add any personal comments
(optional)
7) Choose a closing
 
9) Preview the Letter
8) Print Out: Opens a new window and choose FILE|PRINT to print this letter.

While you can just sign your printed letter,
it is much more effective to copy the letter over in your own handwriting.

9) Mail Your Letter This easiest (and cheapiest) way to mail your letter is to simply turn your signed letter into the receptionist at Catawba Care. Your letter will be put into an envelope, addressed, stamped and mailed out for you.

Of course, if you picked a specific Legislator, you can mail your letter to the address that was included in the sample letter, or you can pick a Legislator from the Special Legislators section.
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Your Data
To help make "filling in the blanks" easier on the forms on this page, add or correct your personal information here. This information will be stored on a cookie on your system ONLY. (The only information collected by this site is your name and email if, and only if, you Subscribe to receive updates.)
Check and Save Your Data
Your Name:
Street Address
 
 
   
City  County  State
 
Zip Code    Zip +4  
  (Find your Zip+4 Code in the Find Your Congressmen section)
Email
Phone (optional)
   
Legislator
Information
Senate District Senator
House District Representative
  (Find this information in the Find Your Congressmen section)
 
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Find Your Congressmen
1) First, you need to find out your full 9-digit zip code
 
Use this link
to the US Post Office
to find your zip code
2) Then, enter your zip code here for easy reference.
 
zip plus 4     
3) Click here to close the Post Office window
4)
Next, click HERE to open the State Seach to find your legislators
Just enter your 9-digit ziip code and press "Find Legislators"
5) Enter the information about your State Senator and Representative
in the form below and save for easy retrieval later
 
  District Legislator Name
Senator:
Representative:
zip code -
6) Click here to close the State Legislators Search window
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Special Legislators
For those living in the three counties of York, Lancaster and Chester, which are served by Catawba Care, please take note of these Senators and Representatives from our are who are on specific committees that oversee budgeting and health matters that would affect ADAP and other HIV-related causes. We need to set a goal to especially target these Legislators with our letters to get maximum effects on influencing legislative outcomes to benefit those infected with HIV.
State Senate State House
Senate Finance Committee
Harvery S. Peeler Jr (R)
Senate District: 14
Cherokee, Spartanburg,
Union, York
803-212-6430
Room 213		 Robert W. Hayes Jr (R)
Senate District: 15
York
803-212-6410
Room 205
3M (Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs)
Deborah A. Long (R)
House District: 45
Lancaster, York
803-212-6874
Room 414a		 John Richard C. King (D)
House District: 49
York
803-212-6873
Room 309a
Senate Medical Affairs
Harvery S. Peeler Jr (R)
Senate District: 14
Cherokee, Spartanburg,
Union, York
803-212-6430
Room 213		 Robert W. Hayes Jr (R)
Senate District: 15
York
803-212-6410
Room 205
  Michael J. Mulvaney (R)
Senate District: 16
Lancaster, Rork
803-212-6024
Room 606
House Ways and Means
J. Gary Simrill (R)
House District: 46
York
803-734-3040
Room 420c		  
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Suggest Others
Do you know of other people (friends or family) who would want to help out with our worthy cause? If you feel that they would like an invitation from you to join our crew, then please fill out the form below.
If you have even more volunteers that you'd like to suggest to us, click here to refresh the form above so that you can fill out more names and emails. Another alternative is that you could send us a list,. via email (schiv_campaign@reigningpages.com), of the people and emails that you would like to suggest as possible volunteers that would like to help in our mission.
 
Here's what the email will say, that "SC HIV Campaign" will send out to the people you have suggested:
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Previous Letters
Below you'll find information on the letters that we have already featured.
Under Construction!
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Suggestions
We greatly value your ideas, comments, suggestions, and yes, even your criticisms. Any help that could make this site better and/or could help us work together in contacting our legislators is very important. Please let us know what you think about our plans or this site, about the topics on which we should focus, or about the legislators that we should contact. Thank you for your help in helping us to be a voice for the HIV positive citizens of South Carolina.
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Contact Us
If you have any questions, problems, comments or criticisms, please don't hestitate to use this form to contact us. Your input is very important to us and we will personally respond to you as quickly as possible. We're sorry if anything on this site has been an inconvenience; but thank you for taking the time to tell us about your issue so that we can resolve any problem. Of course, if you had no problem, and just wanted to comment or ask a question, we're to receive your message also. Thank you and we will be responding shortly.
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Updated:
 schiv_campaign
@reigningpages.com