Third day of our conference
On Saturday morning we had a plenary session during which all proposals from the conference workshops were presented and debated.
All the proposals mainly related to constitutional and organisational matters and the details will be published in a few weeks time in our conference report which will contain minutes of all the workshops.
The same day the following workshops took place:
· Major sports and cultural LGBT events – a catalyser for change?
· Lesbian and bisexual women’s health
· Second part of the workshops on developing advocacy strategies
· Engaging government officials in taking up LGBT issues
· Organisational development in evolving LGBT organisations: learning from Health and Advocacy Projects in Eastern Europe and the Balkans
· Engagement with the police.
There were also a number of self-organised groups taking place on Saturday.
On Saturday afternoon we had another plenary session which started with a video greeting from Vladimir Spidla, EU Commissioner on Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (text of his speech in French and English is available below). The speech was followed by a presentation by Belinda Pyke, Director of the European Commission’s Directorate General on Equality between Men and Women, Action Against Discrimination, Civil Society. Belinda Pyke provided very useful insight into how the Commission work on legislative proposals and how the European and national NGOs can play crucial role in supporting such legislative proposals and provide valuable interventions and examples and testimonies of discrimination.
During this plenary we heard election presentations from all the candidates for ILGA-Europe’s Executive Board and the candidates for European representatives on ILGA Executive Board.
This followed by two presentations from the organisations who expressed their candidatures to host ILGA-Europe’s conference in 2009, from COC Haaglanden (Netherlands) to host the conference in The Hague, and from the Malta Gay Rights Movement to host the conference in Malta (both presentations are available below).
In the end of the plenary we had greeting from Birgitta Ohlsson, member of a Swedish Parliament, who was in Vilnius on other business, but when learning about the ban on a Rainbow Flag public event and a demo outside the conference venue, decided to come to the conference to express her solidarity and support, as well as reaffirm Sweden’s commitment to equality and human rights for all.
In the evening more self-organised groups took place. There were also a demonstration of a Swedish film “Don’t you worry, it will probably pass”. This film is about three teenage girls coming out of the closet, finding their identities and making important choices in life.
