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Making Rainbow Waves, a podcast by
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Ilga World. Welcome to another episode of Making Rainbow Waves.
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I'm Suelle Anglin, and I work on communications at Ilga World.
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In this episode, we are talking to Nazima,
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who leads the communication engagement with the Guyana Together campaign by SASOD.
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SASOD, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination,
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is a human rights organization and movement leading change to end discrimination based on sexuality and gender in Ghana.
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Welcome, and thanks for joining us, Nazima.
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Thank you so much for having me, Suelle. I am so excited to talk to you today,
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one, because we're in the region and I love hearing stories about what happens in the Caribbean region.
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And two, I'm so excited to hear more about the Ghana Together campaign.
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But before we get into the excitement, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you started in your advocacy journey?
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Thank you so much. So I am a journalist.
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I am based in Guyana. I started my career in television.
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and I've worked in magazine,
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which is print, I've done online. Most of you,
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you know, anybody listening would say that as multimedia.
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And I'm a freelancer today. I'm also a consultant.
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And I got involved in the Guyana Together campaign last year.
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And, you know, it's so interesting because I've been asked this question before,
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you know, as a journalist, what are you doing in advocacy?
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I see a role for myself in advocacy and that is why I got involved in the Diana Together campaign.
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It's something I absolutely believe in and
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I wanted to be able to lend my face and my voice and my expertise to something that
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I feel is grounded in human rights and that is very important.
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Awesome. And so I know a lot has happened in Guyana over the last couple of years.
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Can you kind of give us just like a general feel of what the atmosphere is like for
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LGBT people living in Guyana at the moment?
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There is absolutely more visibility and there are a lot more conversations that are happening surrounding issues,
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both positive and negative, affecting the community.
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And, you know, it bodes well for the types of conversation that needs to be had regionally about LGBTQ rights.
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But. There is a lot that is also being unsaid at the moment.
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A lot of things are not spoken about. And a lot of that is also rooted in the legislation that a lot of our countries have and how those affects the very basic of rights for members of the community.
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The atmosphere here may not be as aggressive as in other countries.
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And there is a general acceptance,
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but there are still things that affect people like access to jobs,
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you know, access to health care in some instances,
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and obviously discrimination sometimes by the police because a lot of,
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I mean, when I say a lot, it's relative.
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Because of the issues with access to jobs,
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many of our members turn to sex work.
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And when they do that, the police,
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for instance, can discriminate against them.
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And there's a whole cycle of abuse that happens there.
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When I say visibility, I mean,
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like there is a lot more that we can see from where we are.
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There is a lot more. The person's been able to be themselves on the streets.
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There are more conversations happening around
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LGBTQ issues. And
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I'm saying this because of my involvement in the Guyana Together campaign,
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also what I've been seeing on social media,
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my own conversations that have been happening with people.
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And for me, that is an important indication.
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that we are prepared to have some conversation or prepared at least to talk about the community.
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So awesome to hear Nazima. All right,
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so let's just jump into talking about the Ghana Together campaign.
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Can you tell us what led to the campaign and what exactly is the focus of the campaign?
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So I'll talk first about the campaign.
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So Guyana Together campaign is a grassroots effort to really increase acceptance levels among Guyanese and reduce the level of stigma and prejudice for the LGBTQ community.
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And the campaign really focuses on sharing the stories of persons within the community who have found acceptance and support from family,
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co-workers, neighbors, friends,
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and even religious leaders. you know,
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among those persons that provide support.
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For us, and we have launched two videos to date,
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it's really about the support system and hearing from those people who have provided support over the years.
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So our first video is actually with Crystal and Sebi.
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Crystal is a lesbian.
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She is a contributing member of society.
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She works in the oil and gas industry. She actually works offshore.
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And Sebi is sort of like her adoptive mother.
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Crystal had lost her mother at a very young age.
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And Sebi stepped in. She is a social worker.
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That is her job. But she also has this unique connection with Crystal.
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And that is something we wanted to highlight because there are many other persons out there
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who have similar stories and similar relationships of acceptance and love.
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And we really wanted to highlight that sort of story and say,
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look, this is already happening in your life,
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and you're already showing support, you're already showing acceptance.
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And, you know, it's okay to be able to do that more publicly or talk about it.
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So that was our first video. Our second video was with Nash,
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a designer in Guyana, and his friend Crystal,
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who is a social media influencer,
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a businesswoman, and a model. And that also was able to bring out the same messages of love and support.
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Here is this mother of one supporting her friend who is gay.
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She really doesn't care about those things at the end of the day.
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This is her friend. So that is like the core messages that we've been able to use or to put out there.
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The idea is really to start this type of nationwide conversation on how we can help each other to make a change in terms of promoting acceptance and promoting support.
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I feel these things are already happening,
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you know. behind, well,
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I don't want to say behind closed doors, but they're already happening in some way or the other.
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And, you know, why not put a spotlight on them and,
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you know, help to promote a very genuine,
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organic conversation to be had.
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And it's interesting, I'm going to answer your first question now.
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When... It was in 2013 when there was a survey that was done by the
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Caribbean Development Research Services,
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CADREs, and it was a national poll,
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and the national poll had found that
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there was a 28.5% increase in support for LGBT people from the community.
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And that, by the way,
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we really noticed that acceptance level had risen and there was more tolerance than we had previously seen.
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Of course, there could be a number of contributing factors to this.
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Um... It could be that there was more discussions happening in the family years.
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They were seeing campaigns that were happening internationally.
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People were traveling more and more exposed to different norms and culture and changing tides.
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And also, obviously, the internet,
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social media were bringing real stories about members of the community.
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and acceptance and love and so many other things.
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So I think that was also a very crucial endpoint for us with this campaign to really ride that wave and say no.
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this is the right time to have this conversation.
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And how can we contribute to that conversation?
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And we thought it best is you find real people,
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real voices. They're not being paid in any way.
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They are willing to tell their stories and willing to show their love in a very public way.
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And the launch has been very public.
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Since the launch, the videos have had airtime.
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They're played on prime television in prime television spots,
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for instance, news spots. And for us,
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that is like a core audience because there's a certain age group that sit and look at the news at 6.30 or 7.30.
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And we're also riding the wave on the Internet.
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So we are on TikTok. We're on Facebook,
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Instagram. Instagram. Twitter, well, X,
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formerly known as Twitter. And we have our website.
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And I think, you know,
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it's interesting because you see the instant reactions on those platforms.
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And they've all been very warm and welcoming,
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minus the few Bible verses that we get from time to time,
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which is expected. It's so exciting and I'm so happy.
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I always love to hear stories,
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especially when it comes to human rights campaign.
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I always love hearing when people incorporate stories of,
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you know, families and friends and allies,
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because I think allyship plays such an important role in moving the movement forward overall.
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So I'm excited to know if people want to engage with the campaign,
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people want to know more about Sassad. where can we find you on social media?
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And if we want to engage, how can we do that?
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The website is guyanatogether.gy.
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And on Facebook, it's Guyana Together.
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On Instagram, it's Guyana Together. On TikTok,
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it's Guyana Together. And likewise with
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X. So I know you talked a little bit about the role of allyship and partnership in the Ghana Together campaign.
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But if you could expand a little bit more, can you tell us how do you think the stories of allies will really impact societal and behavioral change in Ghana?
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And if you have any specific examples that you can share with us,
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that would also be great. You know, it's interesting because at our launch,
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we did have a religious leader. given remarks at our launch.
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We also had somebody within civil society.
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On our list of partners,
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we have the Guyana Press Association,
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of which I'm a part of, the Black Entrepreneurs Association,
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which is a vibrant body of
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Black entrepreneurs in Guyana. And we have a list of endorsers,
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and they range from private businesses to organizations to civil society bodies and persons who had no hesitation or organizations that had no hesitation.
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to getting on the campaign or endorsing the campaign.
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We also have as a partner, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce,
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which also is a very reputable body with members being from the business society.
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So that for us was a good indication of the types of visibility that is there,
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but also the type of support and people actually wanting to be part of something that is progressive.
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When we had a session And in January,
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with the Rotary Club of Georgetown,
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we did have young business leaders along with the mature business leaders coming out to that lunch meeting for our presentation.
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And that presentation was delivered by a female businesswoman in Guyana who spoke of the need for inclusivity in the workplace and as an indication of the type of support that is there.
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Thank you. You know, like the type of organic support that we're seeing,
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that is always going to be tested when legislation or talks about legislative changes come up.
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And I'm a little bit confident that we live in a progressive society where people are going to say,
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You know, let us consider having this as something that we can discuss openly.
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And I am willing to put my name and my voice and my organization to a cause to ask you to repeal whatever discriminatory laws there are.
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I feel that is the road the Guyanese are going to go down.
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when you see the levels of support that you're getting.
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Because, as I said, we are being a little bit more observant to the things that are happening around us.
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And we are on that trajectory of recognizing what is human rights and what isn't,
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and what is a violation. And I think the endorsements and the partnerships that we've seen so far speak to the support that is necessary.
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Even as I say all of this, we have not engaged any politicians.
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We have not engaged the government.
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We have not engaged parliament, the opposition parliamentarians.
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We wanted to keep this very politics-free for now because we wanted to promote...
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and also show the fact that it's so much organic support that is out there.
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And that is what we needed to highlight.
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And I think that is very important for us.
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Down the road, if this comes, you know,
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if we have to get to this, I think there's room for discussion with the politicians on how this can be addressed.
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All right. Interesting. So now a few countries throughout the region have decriminalized already.
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Yeah. How do you think the Guyana Together campaign and all the work that you've been doing on the ground,
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engaging different stakeholders from government to allies to persons in the private sector,
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how do you think all of this work together might help towards the decriminalization movement in Guyana?
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So, you know, Asuel, when we did that poll back in 2013,
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it was a very clear majority of 53.9% of Guineas who...
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said they would likely support the elimination of the law that criminalizes sex between men.
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On 76.3% of Guyanese said that eliminating the law criminalizing sex between men would have a positive or no impact on their lives.
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And this was in 2013. Here we are 2003,
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2000, sorry, 2023,
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2024, a couple of years from then.
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talking about this. And I think that is a very important indication of the type of support that exists for this campaign,
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but also for decriminalizing the same-sex acts that are so criminalized.
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A couple of years ago, we did have the CCJ ruling on cross-dressing,
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and Guyana's actually struck.
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that law which is a colonial law like most of our Caribbean countries from its law books and I think for us it's just a matter of time and a matter of having
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that homegrown support being shown.
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Okay so I know you spoke about like the launch that would have happened and like the videos that you'd have done so far.
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Is there anything else that you have done?
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relating to the camping, like any other activities that have been done so far?
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And what have those been like? Most of our activities have been around other than the sessions that we did with the Rotary of Georgetown.
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We did some amount of media training and we've also been doing media support through interviews.
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And we have been doing some amount of...
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People have wanted media coverage of some of the candidates.
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And I think that's important for them to tell their stories,
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not only of the persons from the community,
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but the love and support. So a lot of our work has been surrounding that sort of coverage to amplify the campaign,
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amplify the persons involved in the campaign and let them talk about their own stories outside of what we have featured.
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So a lot of it has been related to that.
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Okay, that sounds really great. So what else can we look forward to from the GAN to get a campaign?
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I know you spoke about the different ads on TV,
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you know, the launch and all of that.
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What else can we look forward to from the campaign? We do have a few things that are coming up.
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I'm not at liberty right now to talk about them.
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Excuse my voice. I mean,
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those will have to come as some among the surprises right now.
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We do have a couple more videos that we are going to release,
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and this is going to be during the year.
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But we do have some key public engagements with stakeholders.
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And is there anything else you want our listeners to know before we close out?
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Is there anything else you want persons to know about the campaign?
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Anything else they can look out for on the campaign?
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How you can share that with us? sure um our website um guyanatogether.org all the information is there um you can you know visit you can take a pledge because um there is an opportunity for you to take a pledge there and
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on our socials on facebook on twitter on tiktok on instagram you can find us and like a video share a video we're also on youtube all our videos are there and um you
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You can share anything, you can share your thoughts with us,
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and let us know what you thought about the videos or the campaign.
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I think that feedback is absolutely necessary.
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And just let us know what your thoughts are or just share them.
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Okay, Nazima, thank you so much. This has been such a really great episode.
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And again, I always love when we're able to share stories of what happens across the Caribbean region.
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So thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for sharing on the campaign,
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you know, all the activities that's happening in Ghana. And we really look forward to everything that's going to unfold.
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We know lots of exciting things are coming. And,
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you know, the partners throughout the region and our Ilga Well family at large,
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we're here to support. and to cheer you on in whatever activities you do.
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Making Rainbow Waves is a podcast by Ilga World.
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This episode was hosted by me,
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Suelle Anglin. You can find this and every episode on all streaming platforms.
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A transcript of this episode in English and its translation to Spanish are available on ilga.org.
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Thank you for listening.
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