LGBTI Activists from Twelve Countries Gather to Strategize and Network in Bangkok, Thailand

As part of Astraea's current strategic plan, we have examined ways to increase our impact on movement building, and enhance our support of the social justice work of Astraea grantees around the world. As part of this goal, we intend to convene groups of grantees to promote networking around critical political issues and to expand the capacity of grantees by facilitating shared strategies.

To that end, we held our first Convening in Bangkok, Thailand (March 29 - April 2, 2004) with grantees from Astraea's Social Change Opportunity Fund (an initiative of Astraea's International Fund for Sexual Minorities).

The 13 groups that participated in the Convening have extensive track records of working towards institutional change in their countries and regions. They all seek to employ multi-issue approaches that link discrimination of LGBTI communities with issues facing other communities. Like Astraea, these groups recognize the broad diversity of LGBTI communities—with a number of grantees prioritizing work with those within LGBTI communities, who often have the least access to structural power (including women, Transgender people, poor people, sex workers, and people living with HIV/AIDS).

The four-day Convening included significant discussion and shared thoughts regarding the political state of LGBTI movements in different regions and globally—including discussion of how different organizations/ languages/ communities/ countries talk about their work and communities. The variations of terminology, particularly the textured nuances of terminology indigenous to various communities, spoke to the broad landscape of our movements—and different local histories, contexts, and even priorities.

Given that this was a Convening of activists and organizers from around the world, it should come as no surprise that on Day Two of the Convening an impromptu sign-on letter was organized to protest the Brazilian governmental representatives to the United Nations Human Rights Commissions' withdrawal of their ground-breaking resolution to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. Led by representatives from Coletivo de Feministas Lesbicas de Sao Paulo (a Brazilian lesbian collective) and CIPAC (a Costa Rican-based organization), the majority of convening organizations signed onto the letter (including Astraea).

As grantmakers from the United States, Astraea staff were able to use the opportunity of the Convening to learn more about the work and conditions of grantees in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Latin America—particularly the continued and severe under-resourcing of lesbian-specific projects, and the creativity and resourcefulness of organizations working with modest resources. In addition, the experience of convening a four-day meeting with simultaneous interpretation for up to six languages at any given time (English, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Taiwanese, and Thai) was both challenging and exhilarating as we witnessed participants adapt to the limitations of all of our languages in expressing our lived experiences as LGBTI people.

All of us at Astraea would like to express our thanks and gratitude to all who helped make this first Convening a success: Christine Lipat (former Senior Program Officer at Astraea), Kagendo Murungi (consultant who coordinated preparation for the Convening), Monruedee Laphimon (Bangkok-based Logistics Coordinator), Javid Syed (International Panel member and co-facilitator), Cindy Wiesner (co-facilitator), staff of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), Astraea staff, board, volunteers, panel members and donors.

And of course, the Convening's success depended most of all on the active and provocative participation of all of the participating grantees from the following organizations: Accept (Romania), Anjaree (Thailand), CIPAC (Costa Rica), Coletivo de Feministas Lesbicas (Brasil), Gender/Sexuality Rights Association of Taiwan (Taiwan), Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays (Jamaica), Lesbian & Gay Human Rights Federation (Korea), Lesbian Group Kontra (Croatia), Grupo Lesbico Patlatonalli (Mexico), Prensa Editorial Les Voz (Mexico), Sangama (India), The Rainbow Project (Namibia), and Triangle Project (South Africa)—and the skill and hard work of our interpretation team (Ding Naifei, Kiho Uhm, Andres Garcia, Judith Criado Fiuza, and Sunee Thechatakerng.

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