A look back at Gay Games V human rights workshop

From the website of the Global Alliance for LGBT Education, created at Gay Games V, Amsterdam, 1998:

In 1998, Amnesty International and HIVOS organized a human rights conference alongside the Gay Games in Amsterdam. Empowerment Lifestyle Services was asked to organize a workshop on education against homophobia. This was the first global workshop on this theme.

Participants

The workshop had 5 speakers and was attended by about 20 people from every continent. The speakers were Toni Reis from Brazil, Alan Segal from Canada, Anna Leah Sarabia from the Philippines, XXX from South Africa and Peter Dankmeijer from the Netherlands.

Challenges

When Empowerment organized the workshop, it became obvious there were some basic challenges when discussing education about LGBT issues across cultures. The first question of the invited speakers was: what do you mean by “education”. This was a very valid question. Are we talking about formal education (schools, training) or informal education (learning on the spot, theme sessions)? Which kinds of schools or other formal education are we talking about? Which kinds of target groups: children, teenagers, heterosexuals, LGBT constituencies, professionals? For the sake of the workshop, Empowerment decided to focus on education of heterosexual young people in order to combat homophobia, especially in schools.

Differences and similarities

During the workshop, it became clear educational work differs in some ways, but it resembles in other ways. The divergences seemed to be mainly due to social and political contexts, which determined access to the school system and to young people. In a more conservative context, it is more difficult to get access.
But once educators have access, the discussions they have with young people seem to be very similar all over the world. Most young people are surprised and ask lots of (the same basic) questions. Some are afraid and angry; those kids and their often fundamentalist religious parents pose the biggest challenge for educators.

Recommendation

The recommendation of this workshop was to create a global network for exchange and to raise the quality of the work. This would be especially useful for the exchange of best practices on how to discuss homophobia and heteronormativity.