MSMGF.org is designed as a tool for information exchange, advocacy, networking, and capacity building. Whether you are an advocate, a program implementer, a researcher, a policy maker, or a community member, this site aims to connect you with valuable resources to help optimize your work for the health and human rights of men who have sex with men (MSM) and other sexual minorities.
This FAQ will help you understand how you can use this tool in your daily work. Should you have any additional questions, please write to us at contact@msmgf.org.
The MSMGF monitors listservs, news outlets, journals and blogs from all over the world daily to ensure that you have the latest information on MSM and HIV as it happens. We collaborate with partner organizations in Lebanon, China, Cameroon, Brazil, Russia and Peru to ensure that you have access to original articles and documents published in each of the MSMGF’s seven official languages.
Every day the MSMGF and its partner organizations translate the titles of all new articles and documents uploaded to MSMGF.org into each of the MSMGF’s seven official languages, allowing members to find the information they are looking for regardless of its original language.
We realize many of our members are multilingual and that many community-based organizations translate articles and documents for their own staff to read every day. The MSMGF.org provides an easy system for making those translations available to other organizations as well by uploading them to the MSMGF database.
If a member finds a useful article that is written in a language they cannot read, they are invited to vote for it to be translated by another MSMGF member. The articles that receive the highest number of votes per language are listed in the Translation Center. Using this system, we hope to work with our members to make the most useful information available to our members in a language they can read.
If you speak more than one language, we ask that you visit our Translation Center to see which articles MSMGF members have voted up for translation. Thank you in advance!
When writing grant proposals or policy statements, it always helps to back up one’s statements with solid evidence and voices from affected communities. Each time the MSMGF uploads a new document, our administrators read through the full piece to extract useful statistics and quotes and make them available to our members for easy access when drafting documents.
It should be noted that the MSMGF cannot confirm the veracity of the quotes and statistics displayed on MSMGF.org. Each quote and statistic is extracted from an article cited directly beneath it – they may be corroborated by data or they may be simple claims that the author is presenting. The onus is on each member to confirm the accuracy of the information presented.
A big part of the MSMGF’s job is circulating the most recent peer-reviewed research published on MSM and HIV. While some of this research can be accessed for free, many articles are only available in abstract form, with the full text available only by purchase of $30 or more.
In order to increase access to these important resources, the MSMGF works with POPLINE and other organizations to offer free full text versions of as many of these articles as possiblee. If you are from a low- or middle-income country, there are several options for accessing full text articles without charge. Visit our Full Text Access Page to learn more.
We invite all members to submit materials that are relevant to the health and human rights of MSM. However, we reserve the right to post which items we feel will be most useful to MSMGF Community members. We do our best to post all member submissions – but some things that might flag a submission for refusal are listed below:
Please note that the MSMGF does not necessarily endorse the opinions, action alerts, or any other content shared on MSMGF.org. The MSMGF circulates these materials as a service to the community.
Each individual who registers with MSMGF.org is considered a member of the MSMGF Community. When someone signs up to be a member of the MSMGF, he or she will fill out a profile, the public section of which is added to the searchable member database on the MSMGF Community page. Members can search this database by region or topic to find useful contacts, new partners, or even potential funders. Members may also make their profile invisible should they choose to do so.
Once a member finds a person or organization they would like to contact, they can use the MSMGF’s internal messaging system to send them a message. The RSVP function on the MSMGF Calendar also serves as a potential networking tool. This function allows members to see who will be attending future events, enabling for early planning of on site face-to-face meetings. and plan
To help facilitate important dialogue among the members of the MSMGF's large and diverse constituency, the MSMGF supports interactive Discussion Forums in each of its seven official languages. The MSMGF and its partner organizations translate the title of every posting into each of target language to ensure your voice is heard by the global community.
How to Post
To post to one of the Discussion Forums, you may leave a comment at the bottom of a thread in one of the forums on MSMGF.org (here), or simply send an email to that forum’s corresponding email address (listed below). Guidelines for posting on MSMGF Discussion Forums can be found in FAQs. Please note that you must subscribe to a given Discussion Forum in order to post there.
You can subscribe and unsubscribe from MSMGF forums by logging in to MSMGF.org via the link the upper right-hand corner of the website, clicking "My Settings" in the upper right-hand corner of the website, and then clicking "Email Subscriptions."
Arabic: arabic@forum.msmgf.org
Chinese: chinese@forum.msmgf.org
English: english@forum.msmgf.org
French: french@forum.msmgf.org
Portuguese: portugese@forum.msmgf.org
Russian: russian@forum.msmgf.org
Spanish: spanish@forum.msmgf.org
Discussion Forum Rules
The MSMGF Discussion Forums are meant to be places of respectful dialogue and debate. Please observe the following ground rules for posting on MSMGF Discussion Forums.
1. Please make sure your post is in the language of the listserv. For example, please only post Spanish-language messages on the Spanish-language Discussion. Please do not post Spanish-language messages on the Russian-language Discussion Forum, and so on.
The MSMGF makes sure that the subject headings of all threads are translated into each of the MSMGF’s seven official languages – so interested members who do not speak your language will still be notified of notified of your post. Multiple postings in different languages can make threads difficult to read. If you would like to comment on a post made in a language other than your own, please visit that thread’s page in the MSMGF Discussion Forums section of the MSMGF website and comment in the Comments box. The original Discussion Forum will be notified of your comment.
2. Please ensure your tone is respectful and professional.
3. Please do not use this space as an advertising platform for your organization. We welcome discussions of initiatives your organization may be undertaking, but general descriptions of organizations are not encouraged. If you would like to post information about your organization, you are invited to do so on your organization’s profile in the MSMGF Global Directory.
In addition to developing new action alerts, the MSMGF also makes it a point to circulate the action alerts of other organizations. For members who wish to read more background information on a given action alert, we provide Advocacy Issue Reference Pages. Each reference page contains a collection of articles on particular advocacy issue to give members broader context for the action to be taken.
It is important to note that we do not necessarily endorse all action alerts circulated on MSMGF.org.
In addition to circulating existing action alerts, the MSMGF provides tools for members to create their own action alerts and advocacy initiatives. These include advocacy toolkits, a listing of key documents, archives of country commitments to international human rights agreements and progress reports, and a directory of advocacy organizations in the MSMGF Community. All of these resources can be found on the MSMGF’s Advocacy page.
When someone signs up to be a member of MSMGF.org, he or she will fill out a form that indicates what kind of information he or she is interested in receiving. Then that member will receive updates as new materials matching those interests are uploaded. If an article of interest is uploaded in a language other than the default language selected by that member, that member will not receive an update until the title of the article has been translated into his or her language. Translation of titles usually takes one business day from initial upload.
In addition, members can choose to monitor Discussion Forums of languages that they do not speak. For example, If a member is interested in Latin American issues but does not speak Spanish or Portuguese, he or she can choose to monitor the Spanish and Portuguese Discussion Forums. Monitoring a Discussion Forum means that every time a member of those Discussion Forums posts an update, those members monitoring those Discussion Forums will receive an email notification. All email notifications are translated into each member's selected language. He or she can then choose to visit that post’s location on MSMGF.org and make a comment on the posting - members are invited to make comments here in all languages. Members of Discussion Forums are notified everytime a comment is made on one of their threads.