NEWSLETTER www.giveout.org @GiveOut_Org
PRIDE 2020 EDITION COVER STORY
COVID-19: How the LGBTQI movement is responding In their recent report, our partner Kaleidoscope Trust found that state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are forcing many LGBTQI communities into increasingly precarious situations and threatening the survival of LGBTQI organisations. And another of our partners, OutRight Action International, found that LGBTQI people are facing the loss of livelihoods, disruption to accessing health care, an elevated risk of domestic and family violence, social isolation and increased anxiety, abuse of state power, and concerns over organisational survival.
For many of us, this pride month is different. With parades and events cancelled or moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are still learning to adapt to a new normal. However, for many LGBTQI people around the world, threats of violence and stigmatisation mean that Pride has always been inside or virtual. Perhaps now more than ever, with the Black Lives Matter movement, many of us are thinking about the history of Pride as a protest and asking how we can better stand in solidarity as a global and diverse community today. As the virus continues to cause devastating loss, everyday life has changed in unprecedented ways. Lockdown, restricted movement and curfews have been imposed across the globe. For LGBTQI people around the world, this has exacerbated existing vulnerabilities, with many struggling to access healthcare and emergency support, being scapegoated, and even facing serious human rights abuses.
In this and other research, concern over the survival of LGBTQI civil society organisations is a common theme, with funding at risk. This is why GiveOut is working to provide emergency funding to LGBTQI human rights groups, alongside our long term support. We quickly established the COVID-19 LGBTQI Global Solidarity Fund, a worldfirst emergency appeal to support LGBTQI organisations in their response to the pandemic, to continue their vital work, adapt their ways of working, and develop new services and approaches to activism. Over Pride, we are asking individuals and businesses to donate to this fund.
LGBTQI movement is resilient, and this is not our first health crisis. We are at a historically critical juncture, one that may potentially offer an opening for new visions of LGBTQI organising. This opportunity and urgent need for change is reflected in recent protests against racism globally. As a community, we owe a great deal to the Civil Rights Movement, and to the activism and leadership of LGBTQI people of colour. We are being challenged to listen, learn, and take action. As a charity working to support the global movement for LGBTQI human rights, we are committed to providing resources not strategies – recognising and working against the power imbalances inherent in our work by prioritising the expertise and needs of our grant partners. This Pride month and always, we stand in solidarity with our community everywhere and movements for social justice around the world.
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Overleaf, you will find examples of how our grant partners have been responding and adapting: undertaking research to inform advocacy, providing emergency care packages, and developing online responses, helplines and virtual community organising. The impact of the COVID-19 crisis, will have ripple effects for years to come, and our ways of supporting activism and building community will have to change and adapt. But the
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Turn over to find out more about how our grant partners are responding to this crisis.
HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT LGBTQI HUMAN RIGHTS THIS PRIDE SEASON? PLEASE SEE BACK PAGE