Chasing the Rainbow - Activism and Equality for LGBT Young People

Chasing the Rainbow is a long term project that has gathered LGBT young people from Latvia, Ireland and Finland on two study visits to learn about the diversity of LGBT community, ideas of activism and possibilities of E+ YiA. The two previous study visits took place in Riga, Latvia and Brey, Ireland. The groups have stayed mostly the same. Chasing the Rainbow in Finland will take place during the Arctic Pride in Rovaniemi, the Capital of Lapland. Arctic Pride is small local LGBT/human rights event which has been organised two times earlier. It is organised during one of the coldest and darkest months of the Finnish winter above (or right on top of) the Arctic Circle. Chasing the Rainbow will gather together the Irish, Finnish and Latvian participants from the previous study visits, but invites more LGBT young people to join the activity. From Ireland, Latvia and Finland we will prioritise the participants who took part in the previous visits. The aim of Chasing the Rainbow is to wake up everyday activism in LGBT young people and enable them to use Erasmus+ Youth in Action as a tool to carry out projects that promote LGBT Rights, Human Rights and equality. Chasing the Rainbow is a peer learning activity, where the more experienced participants transfer their learning to the newcomers and engage them in the activism. Moreover, the 18-25 year old participants can extend their activism through planning future E+ YiA projects together and taking an active role in running them. The week in Rovaniemi consists of two different parts: 1) Creating an activity to the Arctic Pride 2) Planning on future projects in E+ YiA The Irish, Latvian and Finnish participants have already framed topics that will also frame the content of the future projects. Each participant will choose maximum 2 interesting topics and work on an activity based on the topics. The suggested topics are: - LGBT issues across Europe - Legal issues affecting LGBT - Trans legislation - Being a Human Rights / LGBT Rights activist - Using arts for human rights - Prejudice, exclusion, hatred and changing it The groups will work together online already before the visit to Rovaniemi and plan their activities so that they can be carried out during the Arctic Pride. We require active participation and commitment from the Chasing the Rainbow participants. You will need to work in beforehand with international partners to create a local activity. Activities that have been carried out at Arctic Pride can work as a base for the projects that the groups can plan during the days after the Pride. Participant profile: - 18-25 year old young leaders - involved on some level in LGBTQIA activities - interested in human rights - curious about international cooperation - have the support of their sending organisation to start international youth projects Chasing the Rainbow has produced a Humans of the Rainbow Photo Exhibition that was opened in Bray and will travel to different countries for future exhibitions. The future participants will also give their faces for the exhibition. Latvia, Finland, Ireland, Hungary and Iceland have expressed their interest for sending participants. The call is open for all of Europe and Russia. Please contact the Erasmus+ Youth in Action National Agency in your country to see if your participation will be supported by the NA. For Russian participants: we may be able to include 1-2 Russian participants, but it depends on our overall budget. We invite your applications, but cannot guarantee we can manage to cover your participation. N.B. National Agencies: this is a TCA16 project.