LGBT Youth & Social Inclusion Conference
On 17th of June, OBESSU was represented by Alba, member of OBESSU’s taskforce for the Social Inclusion campaign, at the LGBT Youth and Social Inclusion conference organised by BeLonGTo in Dublin, Ireland.
BeLonGTo is an Irish organisation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) young people, aged between 14 and 23, providing safe and fun services to LGBT young people across Ireland.
The conference gave an opportunity to see how LGBT issues are being considered by different European organisations and institutions. It was a space to compare the situations and LGBT realities in different countries and see how bad it is in some places, but at the same time how full of energy, motivated and powerful are the leaders working with LGBT. One example was Eliza Byard (GLSEN, USA), who reflected on the incredible progress in the last four years in the USA, and Tomas Vytautas (Lithuanian Gay League), who was reflecting on the Lithuanian context and LGBT issues during the Lithuanian EU Presidency.
During the afternoon of the conference OBESSU took part in the education workshop, where young activists were working on the Draft Dublin Principles on LGBT Youth & Social Inclusion. After that, Pascal LeJeune (European Commission) talked about the European Initiatives on the Social Inclusion of LGBT Youth, mostly in the Youth in Action program.
Finally, one of the best parts was listening different activists from BeLonGTo, who showed us how important it is to work with LGBT in our organisations. These activists showed us how an organisation as ours can change people’s lives, and how much they need us to work with this issue.
In conclusion, the conference was an awesome space of sharing experiences and learning, and now OBESSU is even more ready to work with these LGBT issues within the Social Inclusion campaign!
