IGLYO On Advocacy

equality

nt e r e iff d l l a ual q e all

ISSUE SPRING 2014

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ct

24 advocacy

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CONTENTS

WELCOME 1 BETTERLEGAL 2 Building partnerships for LGBT rights advocacy in a hostile environment

4

Media for Advocacy

6

A year against the closet

8

Youth Advocating for Better LGBT Education

10

Equality in Action

12

Project Co-ordinators Jordan Long and Euan Platt Contributors Elliot Rozenberg, Anastasia Danilova, Romina Tolu, Maria Huhtam채ki, Santiago Rivero, Luis Moreira, Peter Dankmeijer and Jordan Long Design www.haiwyre.com

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This publication is published with support of the European Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity PROGRESS (2007-2013), the Council of Europe European Youth Foundation and the Government of the Netherlands.

The information contained in this publication does not necessarily reflect the position or opinion of the European Commission, Council of Europe or the Government of the Netherlands.

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1

WELCOME

Activism, and that of LGBTQ youth and students,

Here at IGLYO, we believe that the practice of

is done on various levels – be it grassroots

advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes.

organisations and initiative groups or well-

More specifically, advocacy is the deliberate

established entities working directly with

process of influencing those who make or have

decision makers. Regardless of the level this

responsibility for implementing policy decisions.

crucial activity is performed, it aims at reaching

As such, the word ‘advocacy’ is quite pliable

to hearts and minds and, most importantly, at

and is used variously to suit organisational

changing attitudes and policies. Whether in

agendas. It is understood in terms of the work an

Russia or Iceland, Norway or Cyprus, this concept

organisation does and the fundamental mission

is called ‘advocacy’.

of the organisation.

Thus, everyone – whether individually or

e be very an one of ad ca ch voc n an at ge e

collectively – can be an advocate of change. In this issue of ‘IGLYO on’ we are looking into the best practices of advocacy for LGBTQ youth and student equality our members and friends have developed within their activity. We are happy to present you some insights into using media and communications, planning strategically, building partnerships and individual skills for LGBT youth and student advocacy.

We hope you find these articles interesting and useful. They may inspire you for further activism in the field of LGBTQ youth and student equality.

Artiom Zavadovschi IGLYO Board Member

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BETTERLegal

Enhancing Advocacy for LGBT Youth Through Video Content Elliot Rozenberg, It Gets Better Project

Over the last decade, video content has become the norm. The launch of YouTube, the invention of video-taking camera phones, and the rise of social media sites have all played a part in allowing video content to become part of our daily lives. But video content is not just being used to make people laugh or to share special moments – corporations have turned to online video advertising, newspapers have begun publishing stories online in video form, and more educators are using videos to help teach than ever before.

And with YouTube now reporting that over 100 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute, it doesn’t look like the popularity of the video is going anywhere anytime soon.

In September of 2010, Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, uploaded a YouTube video in response to the media’s reporting of a number of LGBT youth taking their own lives after being bullied in school. Speaking directly to LGBT youth, Dan and Terry shared a simple, but powerful message – it gets better.

In March of 2013, the It Gets Better Project launched BETTERLegal, a first-of-its-kind legal program designed to enhance the advocacy being done on behalf of the LGBT community and to send positive messages of hope to LGBT youth.

The program serves to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of the advocacy process for organizations that are advocating on behalf of LGBT people and to inform LGBT young people of the work that these organizations are doing for LGBT people around the world.

th 50,0 ere are vide 00 it ge over t o over s repre s better sen 50 and ,000 sto ting mes sage ries s

Shortly after that initial video was uploaded, it went viral, and within a month, thousands of people representing diverse backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, religions, races, and ethnicities had submitted their own it gets better videos. It was from those initial videos that the It Gets Better Project (“the Project”) was formed to communicate to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth around the world that it gets better and to create and inspire the changes needed to make it better for them. Today, there are over 50,000 it gets better videos representing over 50,000 stories and messages.

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2-3 To that end, BETTERLegal uses the It Gets Better Project’s library of over 50,000 it gets better videos to support the arguments being made in legal cases, equality campaigns, policy making efforts and educational materials. The program allows partner organizations to submit requests for videos that address a certain topic, come from a specific geographic area, and/or feature individuals that meet specific demographic criteria in order to produce video content that supports the arguments that they are putting forward.

specific requirements, BETTERLegal allows its partner organizations to find necessary content without spending staff time or financial resources.

The program also facilitates the use of video content in legal, political, and general advocacy being done on behalf of LGBT youth in order to create more powerful and effective campaigns and arguments. Thus, by lowering costs and by creating stronger arguments, BETTERLegal increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the advocacy process for organizations advocating on behalf of LGBT people.

Once a request is submitted, trained law students and attorneys search the database in order to locate individuals and to extract the legal arguments requested from selected videos. That content is then sent back to the requesting organization with a description of how it supports the legal argument being presented.

The organization can then select to use any of the videos provided or to contact any of the individuals in the videos for assistance with a particular project.

Direct service providers and advocates alike should embrace the use of video content both to reach out to LGBT youth and to advocate on their behalf. Videos are an efficient and effective way to communicate in today’s world, especially to a generation that is growing up with iPhones and Facebook. And now, with social media websites and apps, the increased availability of recording devices, and programs like BETTERLegal, locating and using relevant video content has never been easier.

Finally, after a request is completed, the work of the partner organization is shared over the Project’s social media in order to keep LGBT youth aware of the work that is being done on their behalf. This allows organizations, which often have difficulty reaching out to youth, to inform LGBT young people about all of the programs, projects, and resources that are available and to let them know that that we, as a community, are creating the changes needed to make it better for them.

To find out more information about BETTERLegal, visit www.itgetsbetter.org/BETTERLegal. To learn more about the It Gets Better Project, visit www.itgetsbetter.org.

In the end, by using technology that enables our volunteers to quickly locate videos that meet

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Building partnerships for LGBT rights advocacy in hostile environment Anastasia Danilova, Gender Doc-M

Advocating for LGBT rights or issues in a hostile environment, especially in such as that of Moldova’s, is not easy at all. Working on equality of LGBT people’s rights in the country that decriminalized homosexuality 18 years ago but still refuses to accept different sexual orientations or gender identities as a norm is very challenging.

Living in the country where sexual education is implicitly forbidden in schools and human rights are disregarded even by the members of parliament does not provide you, as an activist, with a lot space to maneuver when it comes to raising awareness about diversity or teaching equality.

The education system in Moldova turns its back on topics that are deemed controversial; instead, it opens its doors wide for the church. LGBT topics are taboo in the classroom. If they are discussed, they are usually reflected in the negative light.

When formal education system fails to address these

ind a ng f o t ri ad we h how to b m ion classroo t u l o s g he it in t hout bein ing wit of mak a’ sed accu opagand ‘pr

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issues, it would be possible to fill in the existing gap of information by letting in non-governmental organizations or professionals with lectures and other non-formal education activities. Ideally, this could have helped hadn’t the system been so rusty. In fact, GENDERDOC-M is not welcome in schools because the prejudice towards LGBT people overrides the need for information.

Therefore, GENDERDOC-M has to look for ways and possibilities of delivering information on LGBT issues to high school students and education professionals by mainstreaming these issues. One of the ways to do so is to ally with mainstream organizations and institutions that have trust and enjoy authority in the field of education. Another way is to build personal and professional partnerships with junior or senior staff of a particular school in order to launch a pilot cooperation that may later result in the desirable change on the systemic level.

In 2013, GENDERDOC-M began implementing two different projects aimed at one goal – preventing and combating bullying in schools.

Prior to launching them, the organization questioned itself: what is the extent of this phenomenon in schools, especially of the homophobic bullying, when its concept hasn’t been studied by education professionals at all and when it is completely disregarded by the Ministry of Education, teachers or even school psychologists? Thus, we proposed ourselves to put out a feeler first. But what can an LGBT nongovernmental organization do in the country that maintains homophobic and transphobic attitudes on the state level? The answer was to build partnerships with the UNICEF (the UN Children’s

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4-5 Fund) mission in the country and Amnesty International Moldova.

In 2012, we approached UNICEF and asked if they were interested in studying the extent of homophobic bullying in Moldovan schools. We had had youth confessing to us how hard it was for them to grow up being gay, lesbian and bisexual in hostile school environment without having anyone to turn to for assistance, not even school psychologists. Such a study hadn’t been done in Moldova before, and we wanted to analyze how bullying affected LGB youth’s wellbeing and sexual behavior. Since we have almost no access to lesbian, gay and bisexual teenagers due to the hostile conditions we have to work in, we decided to carry out a retrospective study by questioning LGB youth who are not only learning in schools at the moment, but also those who have graduated recently. UNICEF found this idea interesting, and currently we are carrying out an on-line survey and face-to-face interviews among LGB people who are under 26. When the study is finalized, we intend to present its findings to the formal education professionals, including Ministry of Education, in order to sensitize them with regard to the bullying in general and that of homophobic nature in particular for they elaborate anti-bullying programmes that will be implemented on the local level.

In parallel, we decided to raise awareness of high school students from rural areas about the phenomenon of bullying. As I mentioned above, LGBT topics are taboo in Moldovan schools.

We had to find a solution how to bring it in the classroom without being accused of making ‘propaganda’. We decided to talk about bullying

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as a phenomenon and to mention anti-LGBT bullying as one of its kinds. To have these nonformal education activities organized, we turned to our partners at Amnesty International Moldova who maintain a network of high school teachers across the country who incorporate human rights approach in their lessons on civic education or extra-curricular activities. Surprisingly, we had an exploration of responses from a number of schools located in small villages, towns and the capital city of Chi˛sin˘ au inviting us with the lecture on prevention of bullying to them. By holding 11 of these educational activities within two months, we managed to raise awareness of more than 200 students and 30 teachers about bullying and its prevention, collect data on how students and their teachers react to the topic of bullying, and what are the best ways to teach this material.

Both of these projects are going to serve as a basis for GENDERDOC-M’s advocacy on prevention and eradication of homophobic and transphobic bullying in Moldovan schools once all the activities are finalized. Working in the hostile environment makes you seek alternative ways of how to reach your ultimate goal, which is LGBT equality. However, the presence of such obstacles doesn’t mean that it is impossible to advocate for the cause. There are might be a number of ways out from this seeming deadlock. In my view, building partnerships with relevant stakeholders is one of them. These tactics have proven to be a success, at least in Moldova. I am confident that these approaches can be a success in other places too, and that we can change our corner of the world through advocacy.

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Using media and communications for LGBTQ youth and student advocacy Romina Tolu & Maria Huhtamäki, We Are, University of Malta LGBT Society My phone rang sharply as I received a WhatsApp message from a friend; “I think you’d love this article- check it out!” I clicked the link, read through it, and shared it on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. It’s that simple really; word flies fast around the world within seconds.

Or is it really that simple?

It’s simple to find millions of shares of a Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball parody, yet I see barely anything on heart-warming, relevant and important social messages. Miley’s celebrity helps her social media presence. But those links with social messages have a human link—universal elements experienced and shared by many.

At We Are, we have found that combining quality visuals along with a message is one of our most powerful tools to disseminate messages of advocacy young people. The visual is striking in itself, allowing the viewer to stop and engage with the post, rather than just viewing an announcement passively. We have learned that when using visual communications as a means to advocate for LGBT youth it is important to keep in mind these two points: 1. Keep the visuals simple, and catchy. Words must be kept to a minimum.

2. Provide a link beyond the initial medium of contact.

There is no doubt that we, as members of youth organisations, should pay attention to this rise in social media and join in to spread our messages through them. Though we may not be Miley Cyprus, social media is the fastest way to reach out and advocate for youth.

Best practice experiences: Faces for IDAHO (International Day against Homophobia & Transphobia)

Even on the facebook page of a small organization, posts may achieve 300 views within half an hour, Somehow the viral element is lacking. Posting on Facebook is easy, efficient and lets us have direct contact with our target group. Feedback on posts is almost immediate, and you can track how well one post is doing over another. However ‘views’ are apathetic, and they do not necessarily signal ‘engagement’ by the viewers. We Are’s messages might have just appeared on their news feed as someone scrolled through hundreds of items on a page. Virality, on the other hand, occurs when the like button is hit, a comment is made, or even better, the post is shared.

Last year we had a poster exhibition for IDAHO. It was set up both physically and digitally. We displayed the posters at the University of Malta.

The exposition stayed up for more than a month, in a room that many students used. We also put the posters online through Dacebook; it increased our page likes by 150 in just two days. In total the images were seen 20,000 times.

When it comes to delicate issues such as LGBT rights, social and digital media are a powerful tool in many aspects. We can directly contact young people without scaring them away, and it is much less intimidating than when approaching individuals directly face-to-face.

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www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.53468194 9911672.1073741829.143541772359027&type=3

We wanted to know why this particular campaign worked, so we undertook an evaluation of the project. We believe success depended on these two factors; 1. Familiar faces: lecturers, students, and activists took part in this exhibition. This meant that in the small student community of Malta, many people saw someone they knew personally, or at least by sight, on the posters. Once these people were tagged; we reached out to all their facebook friends and more, creating a snowballing effect.

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s

6-7 2. Familiar experiences: we spoke about love, friendship, and universal feelings.

These experiences are not unique to sexual orientation or gender identity, and therefore they were relatable to all viewers. People were able to view more than just LGBT persons, but their allies too.

We posted simple posters with the message “It’s not who you love, it’s how” on the inside of the door of almost all bathroom stalls on campus. People started talking about them; and increased awareness about our group.

Members reached out through our website, which was linked on the posters.

We have come to a stage where online media and traditional media must work together to achieve a complete goal. Without our facebook album, our IDAHO posters would not have achieved the wide reach they did. However hard it may be to gauge the effect of traditional media campaigns, they shouldn’t be disregarded. In addition to reaching students that might not have come across the posters online, experiencing the posters in physical form as an additional effect. It acts as a form of repetition, and they will be more likely to recall our message later on.

In this case success depended on two factors:

A second poster exhibition done during our first year as an organisation was not an online one, but just on campus.

touc chan h one h start ge a l eart, ife a you chain re , and w a fully ill never ction awa b re of e

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1. Catch them unaware: there was no visual noise surrounding our poster. With a seven word message, it was quite easy to take in the message of the poster.

2. Catch them where no one can see them looking: for young LGBT persons, it might be awkward to be seen starting at an LGBT poster taking down a website or number. It’s much less stress free to do so in a toilet, on your own.

This could have also just been a simple poster campaign. However having a link beyond the physical poster, to our website, ensured that the reader could get more than just a seven word message. Though we didn’t track this campaign, we hope that many people followed the link after reading the message to learn about our organizational aims and objectives.

Whatever the medium you choose to use to advocate to youth, whether digital or traditional, make sure you are aware of its limitations and opporunities. Speak about familiar experiences and use familiar (virtual or non virtual) places.

Don’t be afraid to push boundaries, in a respectful way, based in human rights. Act a diplomat for LGBT people—you are representing your organisation, its members and the LGBT youth community.

Finally don’t give up; when it comes to LGBT youth and issues, it’s as important to reach out to only one person as it is to reach out to many.

Touch one heart, change a life, and start a chain reaction you will never be fully aware of.

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2013 – A year against the closet Santiago Rivero & Luis Moreira, FELGBT

Spain is often seen internationally as the country of diversity. In part, this is due to legislation that is often considered advanced when looking at law dealing with gender identity and same sex marriage.

The first law was a novel and very necessary piece of legislation recognizing certain rights to trans people that had been historically denied to them.

However, the law is not as comprehensive as the activist community would like. For example, the law still maintains trans issues as a mental disorder.

The second law was adopted by a Parliament with a progressive majority in 2005, but it was brought to the Constitutional Court the same year by the conservative Partido Popular. It took 7 years to the Court to refuse the conservative arguments and finally ratify the law.

In this context, we ended 2012 with the joy of having same sex marriage for everyone in the country, but also with a serious problem that we had detected throughout the year. A study on bullying and suicide risk disseminated to 653 LGB people under 25 years old demonstrated that 49% of the young people suffered bullying daily or frequently and that 69% had experienced it for more than a year. 8 out of 10 of those who experienced bullying did not inform their families.

To make it worse, 43% of the people interviewed had thought about committing suicide, 35% of them had planned how they would end their own lives, and 17% had finally attempted it at least once.1 These are intolerable numbers telling us the story of a human drama that seriously puts in doubt how the education system in Spain provides protection of young people.

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In order to respond to this in FELGTB, the Spanish umbrella organization working on sexual orientation and gender identity, we decided to focus our advocacy during 2013 to young LGBT issues through a thematic year entitled Young people without closets. This meant that during the whole year, all the organizations of our Federation (more than 50 in the whole country) have worked as a network to mainstreaming the specific needs of the youngest people, advocating for their rights at all levels (local, regional, national and international).

Our agenda started with a ceremony where, in the presence of various stakeholders, such as politicians and trade unions, we presented our demands and objectives for 2013. We focused on the situation experienced daily by LGBT young people suffering bullying.

We also had several meeting with different ministries where we denounced the effects of the cuts on public expenditure towards the LGBT population, notably the exclusion of immigrants from the public health system when they were without documentation, the refusal to offer assisted reproductive services to lesbian and bisexual women, and the maintenance of sex reassignment surgeries in the public health system.

FELGTB has been also very active in demanding the promotion of an educational system based in values with a specific program for targeting the suicide risk of young LGBT people. For this, we presented a report to most of the regional and the national ombudspersons2 and even contacted the High Commissioners for Human Rights of the Council of Europe and United Nations.

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8-9 Unfortunately, our demands have not been heard: a new educational law was approved which does not include any subject related to human rights or SOGI issues while reinforcing the study of religion.

2013 was not an easy year for LGBT advocacy.

Not even for organizing the national Pride in Madrid, which in spite of being the biggest event in the city -attracting more than 1 million people every year- is systematically attacked by the conservative local government. In sharp contrast to the facilities offered to other events, such as the catholic World Youth Day, the Pride has been seldom supported by the local security forces and the organizers (FELGTB included) have been fined with more than 160.000€ for the noise of the event—something that did not happen for other events, such as the World Football Cup. Right after the summer, we also organized FELGTB’s annual Conference of young LGTB people. We gathered more than 100 young advocates in Torrellas, a small village in the north of Spain. This was a very successful event that served both for empowering the young advocates and to raise visibility of LGBT issues in a rural area, something that is very necessary and often forgotten in Spain. As a result of the thematic year, the situation of young LGBT people has been also mainstreamed in the rest of FELGTB’s conferences such as in the meeting of lesbian women, trans people or the Conference of LGTB rights as Human Rights.

As you have seen, in spite of the strength and resilience of our collective, things, even in Spain, are not easy for LGBT people. We are governed by a conservative party which is very much influenced

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by the Catholic morale which governs in such a manner that any criticism is not tolerated. This is evidenced not only by their economic cuts but also by their “ideological cuts” such as their plans to close the National Youth Council due to their “inconvenient” ideological independence.

Fortunately, the strength of our group is based in our struggle, endurance, and empowerment. They will not stop us because we have the power of reason and the strength of our people.

In 2014, the work of FELGTB will be largely based in combating the LGBT phobia not only within our borders but also outside them. For this, we aim to advocate internationally in collaboration with our partner organization—such as IGLYO— for some of the hot issues that we will face such as the European Parliament elections, the raise of intolerance in Eastern Europe or the terrible genocide of our trans fellows.

FELGTB Youth Area http://bit.ly/1j93zNY http://bit.ly/1eNj8Ik

ung o y e of th ffered % 9 4 le su ily or p o e p g da that n i y l l bu y and enced l t n e frequ d experi year a ha 69% ore than m it for 17/01/2014 09:28

Youth Advocating for Better LGBT Education Peter Dankmeijer, Global Alliance for LGBT Education (GALE)

The situation in schools is a great concern for LGBT young people. The online survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union that addressed discrimination against LGBT people (2013) showed that 2 out of 3 LGBT respondents were hiding or disguising being LGBT at school. At least 60% personally experienced negative comments or conduct at school because they were LGBT. We can imagine that outside of the European Union, the situation is probably even more negative.

How can we change this? This is a politically very sensitive subject. Most States consider “education” to involve not only transfer of knowledge and technical skills, but also of social values and norms. About 50% of the UN Member States regard human rights for everyone as a core value, and in principle do not have a problem with including attention to sexual diversity in schools. But the other 50% think that sexual diversity is a threat to ‘traditional’ values and actively attempt to prevent visibility of nontraditional sexualities, especially in schools.

But, you may ask: “the universal declaration of human rights does include a right to education, does it not?” This is certainly true. But how to make States understand this right, and put it into action for LGBT pupils? In the narrow sense, the right to education is mostly about “access to education”, much less about “the content of education” and hardly at all about “safety in education”. A positive addition to this human right was made in the Millennium Goals: gender equality. But this is only seen through a heterosexist lens as ‘equal access for girls’ and does not include attention to gender non-conformity.

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It is very clear that this narrow interpretation of the right to education falls short of young people’s needs. But there are some important initiatives that can help you to become active in your country or to be more effective in your advocacy for LGBT youth rights.

On the global level, UNESCO is the UN organization responsible for cooperation among States on education. Since 2008, GALE (the Global Alliance for LGBT Education) has been prompting UNESCO to give attention to sexual diversity. The pressure to do something about LGBT discrimination was also raised at the World AIDS Conference in the same year. A main conclusion of this conference was that the AIDS epidemic could not be combated effectively when stigmatization of LGBT identities continued.

This conclusion created a wave of initiatives to combat criminalization of same-sex contacts and to explicitly include sexual diversity in sex education programs. But it is clearly not enough to give limited attention to “homosexuality” in sex education. In fact, it is clear that the problem of homophobia is not really about sex, but about social exclusion. The ‘sexual’ well-being of LGBT young people does not suffer because they have gay or lesbian sex, but because everyone tells them to be ashamed of these activities. It has been shown that people avoid you when they perceive you to be gay, lesbian or gender nonconforming. Sex is not the problem, but bullying and exclusion. This prompted UNESCO officials to carry out a global consultation on homophobic bullying in educational institutions and to publish a report (www.lgbt-education.info/doc/unesco/ UNESCO_Homophobic_bullying_2012.pdf).

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10-11 Some LGBT youth groups, like in South Korea, have taken the initiative to translate this report in their own language. Currently, UNESCO is focusing more attention to homophobic bullying through its regional offices. Also, other UN agencies like UNAIDS and UNDP are becoming more active in this area and some progressive countries have instructed their embassies to support local grass roots initiatives in this area.

We are not alone in this struggle any more!

Now what can you do yourself? For many LGBT grass roots organizations, the first impulse is to develop their own education activities. They make posters, films, even curricula and teacher training.

Often to their disappointment, such resources are often hardly used in regular schools. LGBT NGOs don’t have the marketing abilities within the education sector, and teachers don’t know how to use the resources. Sometimes the dissemination is blocked by parents, boards or the government.

To overcome these challenges, we need to assess the needs of LGBT and of the school sector. It is worthwhile to start your strategy by sitting down with other people, reflect on needs and opportunities and then decide about the strategies, interventions and materials (in that order). GALE offers strategic workshops to organize such strategic discussions. In these workshops, we make a distinction between “denying” States, “ambiguous States” and “supportive States”. In each type of State, the starting situation is different, so the goals and strategies also need to be different. For example, in a denying State, any visibility of sexual diversity is forbidden and taboo, so strategies usually focus on making sexual diversity visible in such way that the LGBT population does not become the victim of the visibility. But in a

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supportive State, visibility is already quite high and more visibility may not yield much more impact. It may be that convincing officials to take responsibility for integrated attention is a more effective strategy in supportive States.

Would you like to know what type of State you are living in? Look at the GALE World Map (www.lgbt-education.info/worldmap) and check it out. If your country has not yet been assessed or if you doubt the assessment is correct, try to fill in the GALE Right to Education Checklist (www.lgbt-education.info/en/r2echecklist). This will give you a first impression of your context.

In the GALE Advocacy Guide to the Right of Education (www.lgbt-education.info/doc/gale_ products/GALE-ADVOCACY-GUIDE.pdf) you will find a range of suggestions to take further steps.

Of course, it is best to do this with other people.

It is most nice and comfortable to take action with other LGBT young people. But it may be more effective to also start a dialogue with other stakeholders, such as those from the education sector or the Ministry of Education. This is often a challenge, but there are people who can help, like UNESCO officials. GALE offers strategic workshops which help you get people together, learn about each other’s perspectives, analyze your situation and set goals based on a needs assessment. As a follow-up, GALE proposes to start a GALE or Educational Committee per country, which develops and stimulates a State strategy to better implement the Right to Education for LGBT young people.

We hope that we can all work together to create the best advocacy possible, in Europe and across the world.

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Equality in Action: Youth Activists at the Council of Europe Jordan Long, IGLYO

In September 2013, IGLYO brought together close to thirty young LGBTQ activists for a Study Session at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, France. During Equality in Action, we focus on advocacy that would mobilize the Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation to combat discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

framework in which to advocate.

Similarly, we spent time so that participants could share their experiences on the ground in their countries. Through an activity called ‘Regional Realities,’ everyone was able to share what was happening in their local context. By identifying challenges and opportunities, they made comparisons across the region. Back in

It was a busy week for everyone. The group

plenary, everyone realized that the struggles

spent time getting to know one another,

aren’t that different, and that some of their peers

through interactive games and activities that

live in more open societies because of the hard

also developed group dynamics and trust.

work of advocates over the past decade.

Soon, the business started. We began by establishing a common language for discussing sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. It was important for us to recognize that not everyone shares the common definitions within the LGBTQ community.

So we got to work. In advocacy sessions, we discussed the ways to bridge the local realities, as described by participants, with the ideal situation that is described in the Recommendation itself. The three sessions focused on three different aspects of advocacy.

Also, not everyone shares the same definition of

Nanna Moe, Communications Officer at ILGA-

advocacy, or the same knowledge of the Council of

Europe, discussed online communication and

Europe. As a group, we spent time understanding

achieving outcomes. Richard Koehler, Policy

how the Council of Europe exists as a treaty

and Membership officer at Transgender Europe

body, and how the structures within the Council

(TGEU), gave an overview of TGEU’s success with

of Europe make decisions. This segment of the

accessing decision makers. And Jordan Long,

Study Session ended with a trip to the Palais de

Policy Officer at IGLYO, gave an overview of

l’Europe, where the Council of Europe is housed.

strategic thinking, with a needs-assessment that

We met with the LGBT Issue Unit, a representative

takes into account organizational resources.

of the Commissioner of Human Rights, and the Norwegian Ambassador. Before the participants could work on the substantive elements of advocacy, we needed to gain knowledge of the

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Equipped with skills from the workshops, each participant went to task to think about their own context. The were facilitated through a deliberate

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12-13 process of advocacy planning- taking the framing of their opportunities and issues in regional realities and thinking of ways to use the variety of practical skills to produce change in their countries. They then wrote an operational plan for each idea.

Peer input is the best kind of feedback, so the group workshopped their advocacy plans. We at IGLYO hope that everyone who took part in the Study Session is back home, working

r an ecog d n to pro izing res tho vid a ou se ing pr o r w to ces a ho a so blem en nd ha lut v ac i t c the e th on ha po e ng we e r

for change. That’s how we understand advocacy: recognizing a problem and providing a solution to those who have the resources and the power to enact change.

We hope we help all of our members with their advocacy efforts across Europe.

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