Beijing's biggest gay and lesbian NGO has formed friendly ties with the world's biggest gay and lesbian NGO in Los Angeles and will celebrate their newfound sisterhood at a signing ceremony on Sunday.

Two men meet in the woods of Mudanyuan.

The two centers hope to share their experience in volunteer and project management to offer better service to their respective communities.

"This tie will help us learn and grow," said Fan Popo, executive chairman of the Beijing LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) Center. "The Beijing center has so much to learn from the LA center."

Founded in 1971, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center is the world's biggest gay and lesbian NGO with 300 full-time staff and more than 3,000 volunteers. By comparison, the Beijing center has a few dozen volunteers and was founded two years ago.

Fan Popo proposed the idea while he was working in the city of angels as an exchange volunteer earlier this year.

"I felt they had so much to teach us about how to manage volunteers and projects, how to offer services for the community and how to raise awareness and funding," he said.

The Los Angeles center runs low-cost clinics and pharmacies, organizes art and theater events, offers HIV/AIDS medical care and sexually transmitted disease testing and prevention services, as well as programs helping homeless youth. The Beijing center confines itself to promoting AIDS awareness and publishes the magazine Gayspot.

The learning experience for the Beijing center has started.

"They've been teaching us how to do things by almost holding our hands," Fan said. "Their project manager CCs us on their e-mails so we can see exactly how a project is managed.

"Our goal is to become as big as the LA center."

Los Angeles center CEO Lorri Jean and chief of staff Darrel Cummings are arriving in Beijing next week to attend the official ceremony of the two centers' ties, the first of their kind between China and the US.

Both centers expect more exchange of volunteers and guest lecturers and more collaboration on international projects.

"We're already getting lots of volunteer applications from the US and Europe," Fan said. "I hope soon I'll have more things for them to work on other than translation."