GALE The Global Alliance for LGBT education
This page gives a short overview of the history of GALE.
In 2010, GALE focuses on finishing a range of concrete projects. In the beginning of the year, a schools toolkit and a storytelling toolkit will be published. The two-year projects in Indonesia, the Philippines, Chile, Colombia and Peru will be finished during the year. Four or five new but small storytelling projects will start.
All involved storytellers and interested storytellers from Europe and Canada will come together during an international summer school on storytelling, which will take place from 17 till 25 July in Marseille, France. The summer school will be organized in collaboration with the Euro-Mediterranean Summer University on Homosexualities.
GALE will finish the quick scan of educational interventions in Europe and apply for EU funding to enhance the quality of work on homophobia in schools. GALE is also working on collaboration to map and enhance the right to education for LGBT learners and employees worldwide.
A number of working groups for the collaboration with UNESCO are created for UNESCO government officials, staff and for GALE members who collaborate with UNESCO.
In 2008, the first additional budgets were found and in 2009 projects were started in Indonesia, the Philippines, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The projects in Indonesia and the Philippines focus on story collection. The three projects in the Andean countries focus on schools. On the international level, GALE started to develop a toolkit for working with schools. This toolkit will be published in 2010.
The media project in southern Africa had to be terminated without attaining the desired results; the partner organization did not deliver the agreed products. Attempts to acquire find for European projects failed.
GALE did successful workshops at the Outgames Conference in Copenhagen and on the ILGA Europe Conference in Malta, where the initial results of a European quick scan were presented.
GALE applied to UNESCO to become an operational partner; in October 2009 this partnership was granted. GALE will collaborate with UNESCO on sex education research, teacher training, intercultural dialogue and on sharing expertise through internet.
The GALE membership grew to 365 members.
The GALE advisory board met in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It advised to strengthen the structure of the association.
A worldwide teacher training expert meeting was organized in Warsaw (November 2008) by our Implementing Partner Campaign Against Homophobia (Poland). The content of the meeting was prepared and chaired by Pride & Prejudice (Australia).
Fourteen experts met, explored good practices and the opportunities to collaborate on a joint format. The participants and some other expert were joined in a Development Group, which will develop concrete materials in 2009.
The GALE membership grew to 327 members.
The Dutch government invited GALE to be part of the government delegation in the 4-annual UNESCO World Conference on Education. GALE was able to make several statements on LGBT issues.
The Global Alliance for LGBT Education (GALE) has finished its starting phase in 2007. The website has become operational as a working platform for members. The first 60 members registered and a recruiting campaign was prepared. Strategies ands some projects were developed in Brazil (quick scan, expert meeting on teacher training), southern Africa (development of a media tool and training), Asia (quick scan, story collection and mainstream LGBT issues in feminist NGOs) and Europe (quick scan, teacher training and safer schools).
The Global Alliance for LGBT Education (GALE) had its starting phase in 2006. After a needs assessment by Peter Dankmeijer during 2003-2005, practical work was started to create a global association of educators who deal with LGBT issues. In the end of 2005 and start of 2006, a mission statement and general outline was developed. Experts were asked to join a preliminary board. The preliminary board met in March in Geneva, where the Global Alliance for LGBT Education was founded. After this, operational plans were developed and a trip to explore funding was made to New York. After the human rights conference in Montréal, the board met again and decided about the operational plans. In the last part of 2006, the implementation of these plans was started by developing an online platform and by planning concrete implementation projects, which should be the core of the alliance.
During the years 2003-2005, Empowerment Lifestyle Services initiated a worldwide assessment of views on education about LGBT issues and the need to create a network.
In 1998, Amnesty International and HIVOS invited Empowerment Lifestyle Services, a Dutch consultancy on LGBT Issues in Education, to organize a workshop on education against homophobia for the Human Rights Conference during the Gay Games in Amsterdam. This was the first workshop in its kind. The main recommendation of this workshop was to create a global network for exchange and to raise the quality of work being done.