Letter from Maxim Anmeghichean
Dear ILGA-Europe supporter,
I remember very well my first participation in the ILGA-Europe conference in Bucharest in 2000. I was 19, GenderDoc-M had just started its work and we were implementing our first project. All the faces were new to me, all the people that were around in the gay movement in Europe for years, were strangers, and very few had heard of Moldova before. A week after, when the conference ended, I was a different person, and could proudly call myself an LGBT activist.
The conference was an amazing and very useful experience! The workshops taught about advocacy for LGBT rights, gave the right contacts to use at the European level, shared experiences in different diversity projects and gave a very good and precise flavor of the European LGBT political agenda. The breakfasts and lunches and dinners together with all the other participants were an excellent opportunity for networking, making important contacts, discussing potential projects, getting to know different experiences, even fundraising. Distributed informational materials and hand outs are still now, in 2005, handy next to my work desk, and I quite often refer to them. Besides, there are so many things you just learn from people by watching them, listening to them speaking. The whole conference to me was like a school of LGBT activism, a factory producing a new generation of LGBT activists. And there I was, one of the students.
Today GenderDoc-M has over 10 staff members, owns an office in the Centre of Chisinau, has implemented many projects, and already for three years I am board member of ILGA-Europe. But most of it started there, in Bucharest, at the ILGA-Europe conference. We made a contact with COC Netherlands, and a year later launched a twinning project with support of the Dutch government. We met Stig Ake Petersson from RFSL ( Sweden), and for the four consecutive years organized with support of RFSL prides in Moldova. We met many bright activists, with most of which we have strong working relations. And a big part of our skills and capacity we owe to that conference as well.
I strongly believe that participation in ILGA-Europe conferences is of major importance for activists from Eastern Europe, giving a possibility for professional growth, contacts, expressions of solidarity, giving the feeling that you are not alone in your homophobic and Orthodox environment, but that there is a strong shoulder next you, offering encouragement.
And if you are able to support the ILGA-Europe “Scholarship Angels” scheme, I would very much encourage you to do so. Your support will be one of the best and surest investments in the future of LGBT movement in Europe. And you can make freedom and rights for fellow LGBT communities happen!
Thank you!
Maxim Anmeghichean ,
former Executive Director GenderDoc-M
ILGA-Europe Programmes Director
