NGO Cohort’s Work
- Mission: By uniting trans* persons in Ukraine, we ensure equal access to health services, visibility and protection of rights by the community itself.
- Vision: A world in which trans* people have the opportunity to realize their fullest potential.
The aim of NGO Cohort is to establish an environment conducive to fulfilling the rights and advancing the interests of transgender individuals in Ukraine. This encompasses ensuring economic stability and providing specialized medical services, with a focus on HIV prevention, treatment, and sexual, reproductive, and mental health care. The approach is centered on addressing the community’s needs and fostering proactive involvement. Key objectives include safeguarding human rights, advocating for policy changes (such as the adoption of ICD-11 in Ukraine), engaging with the media, supporting transgender individuals, and facilitating their economic integration into society. Cohort is positioned as a leading force in advocating for the transgender community’s agenda from 2024 to 2026.
Values of the organization
- By developing ourselves, we develop the world
- The right to be yourself is an inalienable right
- Depathologization is the key to trans* health
- Respect is an approach to cooperation from the position of mutual assistance
- Acceptance requires impartiality to diversity
- Involvement in the development and search for new opportunities for the organization
Management structure:
In total, there are 10 trans* persons in our membership; among the staff, there is one cis* woman who is an accountant. The governing bodies of Cohort are composed exclusively of transgender people.
- Executive Director (trans* feminine person)
- Supervisory board (three trans* people)
- Ethics committee (3 trans* people)
Geography of representative offices: Kyiv and the region, Odesa, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Rivne, Mykolayiv, Kherson.
Areas of work/implemented projects
- 2021, 2022 and 2023 – project “Advocacy, awareness and mobilization by the community of trans* people in Ukraine” in the project with the support of the Global Fund “Accelerating progress in reducing the severity of tuberculosis and HIV infection in Ukraine” for 2021-2023;
- 2021 – project “Ukraine – a space of tolerance” under the program “Resilient Movements, Stronger Communities” from RFSL (the Swedish Federation for LGBTQI Rights);
- 2022 – project “Uniting the trans* community of Ukraine!” under the program “Resilient Movements, Stronger Communities” from RFSL (The Swedish Federation for LGBTQI Rights),
- 2021-2023 – project with Global Action for Trans* Equality (GATE) “Long-term capacity building of networks and organizations of key populations in the context of HIV within the framework of the Global Fund Strategic Initiative “Community, Rights and Gender” (CRG).”
- 2021-2023 – the “Trans*Map of EECA” project, supported by the Elton John AIDS Foundation.
In 2024, NGO Cohort will implement two main projects:
- “Strengthening the potential of the organization of trans* people, its proactive participation in advocacy, mobilization, informing and building partnerships”, activity is supported by the Global Fund under the program «Sustaining HIV/ AIDS and tuberculosis response in wartime Ukraine»
- The second and completely new project is “Protection of the rights of transgender people of Ukraine with the help of equal paralegals”.
In the first few months of the war in Ukraine, more than 1,500 trans people left to go to different countries. So we lost a lot of trans activists and my colleagues also, from the Board of NGO Cohort. In the first few months we were in shock, and we couldn’t do our project activities because we had to focus on buying food and providing humanitarian aid for trans people who stayed in Ukraine.
Anastasiia Yeva Domani, Executive Director of NGO Cohort
