We Need to Talk About Democracy: ILGA-Europe launches the new resource for the movement 

Date: 22 September 1:00 – 2:30pm 

How do you talk about democracy to people who have stopped believing in it? How do you successfully frame Pride as a protest, make elections feel worth showing up for, and connect LGBTI rights to what everyone wants from their everyday life?

ILGA-Europe brought together a cohort of eight LGBTI organizations from Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia that have been working on these questions through the Democracy Lab, ILGA-Europe’s programme supporting LGBTI organisations to take a prominent role in wider pro-democracy movements and discourse. Because LGBTI movements were always at the forefront of the fight for democracy.

“We Need to Talk About Democracy: A Communications Guide for LGBTI Organisations” gathers what we have learned so far. It was built from our conversations with different parts of civil society, the Democracy Lab convening in Brussels, one-to-one interviews and an online focus group with the partner organisations. This guide draws on the campaigns, experiments, and honest reflections on what worked and what didn’t.

Join us for the online launch to explore the guide and how your organisation can put it to work. 

We will share:

• Guiding principles for shifting your LGBTI rights communications toward a democracy frame

• What to say instead of “democracy” for audiences who don’t relate to it

• Campaign and messaging examples tested by the partners organisations

Register here: https://ilga-europe-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/cf-G_ddXTe6jVlEg77noFg  

Facilitators

Svetlana Zakharova (she/her), ILGA-Europe Senior Programmes Officer

In her role, Svetlana works closely with LGBTI movements in Europe and Central Asia. From 2022 to 2025, Svetlana has been coordinating ILGA-Europe Strategic Communications Programme to foster stronger and more strategic communications across the European and Central Asian LGBTI movement. At the moment, her work is focused on the intersections between LGBTI rights and work in support of Democracy. 

AJ Venturini (they/them), Communications Strategist and Facilitator

AJ is an LGBTI communications expert, facilitator and coach with over a decade of experience leading creative social change projects. Through their work with ILGA-Europe, TGEU, Amnesty International and Outright International, among others, they have supported activists and grassroots organisations to develop communications strategies, sharpen their messaging and campaigning. AJ is the author of several ILGA-Europe communications resources for the movement and led the development of this guide.