GATE partnered with AKAHATÁ to provide this training for global trans and gender diverse activists to develop an organizational safety, security, and wellbeing plan.
How do we collectively think about and tackle the structures of violence targeting our identities? If there’s anything that the pandemic has taught us, it’s that inequality is amplified when lacking solid support systems. As trans and gender diverse activists organizing networks worldwide, it is important for us to take care of those working close to us. Developing an organizational safety, security, and wellbeing plan can ensure that we protect ourselves and our organizations from physical and virtual threats, and help prevent burnout.
Trans organizations currently face a gap of over 50% between the demand for funding and the activities that receive it, including activities relating to security, safety, and wellbeing. Our aim is to enable trans activists and organizations to challenge this status quo, to prevent the continuity of such conditions by preparing activists from different backgrounds to develop actionable plans in all areas of their work. For this training, we partnered with AKAHATÁ to engage international activists to guide us in this process of co-creating better and more dignified working and living conditions for trans and gender diverse communities.
Here is an overview of the five key areas that you will explore in this training:
- Reflections on violence: You’ll reflect individually and collectively on violence as structural, used as a control mechanism. Violence against LGBTIQ+ people is not individual acts perpetrated by people who are “unwell”, but consequences of a system that upholds discrimination.
- Security and Safety: This material asks us to think about what the word SAFETY means. Who uses it, what is it used for, what inspires us?
- Feminist self-care: What is self-care? Have you heard about feminist self-care? Feminist Self-Care is thinking about self-love from a perspective that questions gender roles, classism, racism, and the colonial heritage in our society.
- Digital security: The virtual as real. There is an idea about the ‘virtual world’ that is based on the belief that what happens there simply dissolves in cyberspace when in reality, everything that happens virtually has a physical repercussion.
- Safety and Self-Care Plans for Organizations: Strategizing around all the topics we’ve discussed with careful orientation from expert trans activists.
These short video sessions have been carefully designed for you to share with members of your organization. They are easy to follow to ensure accessibility for everyone.
Stay connected, stay safe, good luck, and enjoy the training!