We believe that we as a community are stronger together, and that it is in our best interests as an organisation, and in the interests of the LGBTI+ community in Africa, to collaborate, share skills and exchange knowledge whenever possible. Therefore, one of our strategic outcomes sees us working toward stronger organisations and movements of lesbians, gender non-conforming, trans and intersex persons working in areas of media, documentation and advocacy. This outcome area includes media and documentation trainings, advocacy strategy development and start-up support for organisations of lesbians, gender non-conforming, trans and intersex persons working in these areas.
As such we endeavor multiple times per year to facilitate or collaborate on trainings and workshops for lesbian, transgender and intersex activists from the region, maintain close ties with local grassroots organisations – providing technical or logistical support where possible.
Furthermore, given the heightened state of vulnerability that so many lesbian, transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex people find themselves in, Iranti tries, with limited resources, to support a small number of emergency cases annually. In such situations we do what we can to help get people on their feet and become self-sustaining. No funding partners currently fund such interventions and we rely almost entirely on donated money to assist our community.
Iranti is committed to:
- Increasing awareness and create stronger alliances across borders in Africa, and throughout the Global South.
- Creating supportive environments for struggle, activism, and generation of critical ideas.
- Strengthening media-related abilities in order to be effective politically, holding justice systems to account and closing gap between policies and their implementation.
- Building audiences and people of influence in all spheres who speak out against violence and human rights violations.
- Strengthening capacity of CBOs (Community Based Organisations) to start up, grow and become self-sustaining
- Strengthen the ability of organisations of lesbians, gender non-conforming, trans and intersex persons in Africa to collaborate and collectively advance agendas and movements.
- Intervene in emergency cases of discrimination or violence when and where possible.
Some of our recent training projects include:
- Acting as fiscal-sponsor to ISSA (Intersex South Africa) as the organisation re-launched and redeveloped itself after having shut down for a number of years.
- Maintaining ties with CBOs from three South African provinces (Gauteng, Limpopo and North West) for the purposes of violations reporting and media training through the ZwaKala Project
- Annual Trans Leadership and Wellness Training which seeks to strengthen transgender advocacy in Southern Africa
- RFSL Rainbow Academy on Leadership, organised in collaboration with RFSL and EATHAN, to train trans-activists from Southern and East Africa on the latest organising, financial sustainability and grassroots media-making tools