Past Program

Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum and ILGA Asia have developed an increasingly close partnership over the last years. We are now discussing how we can strengthen our future work together, with a special focus on supporting the next generation of LGBT leaders. We both want to look into the potential of creating a global inter-generational space where young leaders are offered the support and community they need in an increasingly complex and often polarizing world.

Using both Salzburg Global and ILGA Asia meetings and conferences and their complementary expertise on curating meetings, building large communities, nurturing vocational skills and strengthening advocacy both onsite and online, young and established leaders can engage, learn and support each other to turn their visions into reality. We have also started to explore this ambitious vision with ILGA World as a potential third partner. We all share the vision that a stronger connection of global networks of LGBT human rights defenders helps us to confront urgent regional and global challenges that a new generation of leaders is facing.

To expand our discussion and to put our concept idea to the test, ILGA Asia and Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum invited Asian Salzburg Fellows to discuss this vision in a Fellow-guided workshop ‘Asian fellows discuss global visions: A workshop by Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum’. In preparation, our Salzburg team discussed the workshop goals, lead questions and result documentation in a series of online meetings with our partner ILGA Asia and consequently with the moderators and speakers - all of whom are Fellows of the Global LGBT* Forum. The workshop was conducted onsite at the 9th ILGA Asia Conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam that took place November 28 to December 2, 2022.

It is our Fellows voices that identify urgent challenges and guide our ambitious plans to connect larger global networks to respond to their needs. How can we strengthen upcoming leaders and their global exchange with each other? How can our networks work together to advance their vision on LGBT equality?

In their strategic plans, both Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum and ILGA Asia emphasize new partnerships and alliances as a goal (including consortium-funded partnerships) in response to growing global challenges.

Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum conducted two global gatherings previously in Asia, inChiang Rai, Thailand in 2016 and in Kathmandu, Nepal in 2019. Both meetings initiated our growing cooperation with ILGA Asia. Asian Fellows are the largest Fellow group in the Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum; many of them also work with ILGA Asia.