GALE The Global Alliance for LGBT education
In December 2008, GALE submitted a request to UNESCO to engage in operational relations. The request was accepted on 2 October 2009.
UNESCO in principle is a network of governments, discussing cultural, academic and educational policies. However, UNESCO allows educational institutions and other related NGOs to ally with UNESCO when the sharing of knowledge has an added value. UNESCO distinguishes between formal and operational relations. Formal relations are either consultative or associate partnerships. These consist of intensive and formal collaboration either on information sharing (consultative) or being a core partner in implementing UNESCO programs (associate partnerships). Operational partnerships are more flexible and dynamic. These relations should make it possible to encourage the emergence of organizations representative of civil society, and their interaction at the international level, in those parts of the world in which they are weak or isolated. Also, these relations should make it possible to gauge the competence and operational effectiveness of international non-governmental organizations with which UNESCO has previously had no relations whatsoever and which are desirous of establishing formal relations with it. GALE has chosen to opt for an operational relationship at this time.
The status of operational partner will enable GALE to be invited as observers at conferences and make it eligible for financial collaboration with UNESCO. GALE may also be invited to participate in current programs UNESCO is implementing.
GALE identifies four areas which it would like to collaborate on with UNESCO. The first is hman rights and sex education research. UNESCO has carried out several researches focusing on human rights and sex education. The inclusion of LGBT issues in such research is extremely important to make educators and authorities aware of problems at hand. Next to monitoring surveys, exploratory research to make interventions more evidence-based and evaluation research are essential. GALE itself carries out quick scans on the Right to Education for sexual minorities and on good practices. GALE wants to support UNESCO in exploring LGBT issues and to enhance questionnaires. UNESCO may support GALE in connecting researchers and educators to local GALE activities in order to enhance this local work.
GALE has started to develop a format for effective teacher training modules on sexual diversity. It would be useful to exchange expertise on this with UNESCO-related general experts on teacher training.
GALE is a virtual learning community of educators. Its website community is an experiment with online sharing of expertise. GALE would like to share and enhance these experiences with other virtual networks and interventions, notably with UNESCO.
In the future, e-learning may be an important capacity building instrument for students of sexual diversity and social inclusion. GALE will take a lead in this area and hopes UNESCO can assist in the development and implementation of such programs.
UNESCO aims to promote tolerance, respect, mutual understanding and interest by cultural exchange. Sexual diversity often takes the shape of defined local subcultures. However, such subcultures are not always included in the intercultural dialogue. One of the core activities of GALE is to collect life stories of sexually diverse people and to share them. It is expected that such storytelling will help to decrease social exclusion, stereotyping and discrimination. GALE is interested to explore with UNESCO how such storytelling can be integrated in more general intercultural dialogues. There are already some interesting good practices in this area that can be shared and collaborated on, like the UNESCO Mondialogo School Contest and Gigapan Conversations and the Lesbian and Gay Panel Sessions that take place in Europe and Canada.