Sep 12

Sep 12 Call for Applications: Community of Practice on LGBTI and Mental Health

Power of Pride (PoP) is looking for people who will be available (around 4-5 hours per week) to be part of a Community of Practice (CoP) on LGBTI and mental health.

We are calling for applications of individual activists, scholars and alike from Africa, Asia and the Netherlands to help us develop new knowledge, tools and cooperation in the field of LGBTI and mental health.

Power of Pride

Power of Pride (PoP) is an international development programme, implemented by COC Nederland, ILGA Asia and Pan African ILGA (PAI). The programme’s vision is working towards diverse and inclusive societies where LGBTI people can participate to their fullest potential. In order to contribute to this vision, we work inside-out.

This means we support local, regional and international LGBTI organisations in their efforts to bring about change from within their own communities. This principle applies not only to the definition of the programme’s priority areas, activities, budget allocation, but it also influenced the definition of its learning agenda. In guiding our learning activities, the inside-out principle means we want to explore themes that are relevant to the communities we work with.

LGBTI and Mental Health

Mental health has gained a lot of visibility in the last couple of years, especially after the COVID-19 outbreak and the consequent isolation most of the world population experienced.

From a survey shared with partners of the Power of Pride programme, we realized that partners need mental health tools to support their LGBTI community and trauma-informed work was found by partners as fundamental to contribute to the mental health of the community.

Similarly, mental health support that is both accessible and affordable for people from the LGBTI community was highlighted as a crucial need.

The CoP will play a central part of the PoP Learning Agenda and will shape our formal learning plan within the alliance. Through the CoPs, we will work on learning questions on LGBTI and mental health and implement (pilot) projects based on their first recommendations in order to form final evidence-based recommendations for the Programme.