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Description
This project is an extension of the activities carried out in our previous project ''Rainbow Families Zone – Integration, Education, Empowerment''. In it, we strengthen LGBT+ families raising children and support their self-organisation. Our aim is to build allied networks of professionals and influencers of local policies (especially in the areas of education, health and social care and equality). The main target group is children and young people raised in rainbow families, and the direct recipients of the activities are rainbow families and people representing local government institutions. As part of the project, we are building allied networks in at least two cities (excluding Warsaw). Project activities began with the development of a publication: ''How we built alliance networks of rainbow families in Poznań. Report for the years 2012 - 2022''. We have been cooperating with the City Hall of Poznań for about 10 years, and we have also benefited from the advice and personal experience of several allied people who have supported our activities in the City of Poznań. As part of the project, we are organising seminars that provide an opportunity for the issue of rainbow families to appear in public discourse. The implementation of the grant will also enable the development of a model for network building in further centres that report a similar need and readiness to act. We will describe our experience in a strategy for gaining allied individuals for rainbow families.
Summary of project results
The main goal of our project was to improve the situation of rainbow families by creating a more friendly environment, open to the needs of this community, including acquiring new allied people and connecting them into local allied networks. An additional goal was to strengthen rainbow families through mutual integration and activation of self-advocacy activities. We expected that establishing relationships with allied people would enable us to be perceived as representatives of the needs and communities with whom it is worth conducting social consultations regarding new legal solutions and initiatives undertaken by local governments/cities. We assumed that the allied network operating among local government employees corresponding to, among others, for education, health and social policy will allow us to better protect children and young people raised in rainbow families from unequal treatment. We diagnosed that these actions would accelerate the process of changing social attitudes and contribute to greater support for the legal recognition of our families. To achieve this goal efficiently, we needed to develop methods of identifying these people, how to reach them, how to mobilize them to act, how to convincingly present our situation and special needs, how to proactively influence the creation and implementation of law by establishing contacts, and how to counteract exclusion.
We completed the project tasks by organizing, among others: seven local meetings of rainbow families in several cities in Poland and two weekend activation trips. When preparing to expand the alliance networks, we relied on the experience of Poznań, where over the course of several years the Foundation''s activists managed to establish valuable relationships, gain recognition and the expected voice during social consultations on issues important from the point of view of rainbow families. The culmination of our efforts to create local allied networks was a seminar attended by 12 plenipotentiaries of provincial mayors for equality. In March 2024, as part of efforts to include the rights of rainbow families in the ongoing law on civil partnerships, on the initiative of the Foundation, a meeting with Minister Katarzyna Kotula was held at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. After this event, the Foundation and the problems of rainbow families gained greater recognition, which in turn contributed to the greater presence of the topic in the media.
The main beneficiaries of the project are rainbow families. As a result of local meetings, families were able to integrate, strengthen each other and exchange experiences. Two weekend activation trips contributed to obtaining knowledge and tools that strengthen identity, self-awareness and agency, and thus facilitate changes in the local environment. The political change that took place in October 2023 enabled us to bring our demands to the government level. In March 2024, during the next seminar, Foundation activists, rainbow families and allies met at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister with the Minister of Equality, Katarzyna Kotula. This meeting enabled us to incorporate the needs and demands of rainbow families into the draft law on civil partnerships currently being processed. Our activities carried out, among others, as part of the project, were appreciated by the jury and people voting as part of the annual Crown of Equality plebiscite, organized by the Campaign Against Homophobia. The Tęczowe Rodziny Foundation received the most votes among the organizations and people nominated for the award in the Activism category.