The fifth instalment in a year-long series of posts by RFF Founder & Executive Director, Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes, on the origins, mandate and work of the organization.
Following the Parliament of the World’s Religions in November, 2018 RFF hosted a one-day symposium to hear from activists around the world regarding the impact of religious-based discrimination against the LGBTI community, and what’s working and not working to counteract that impact. A presentation was made outlining the Vision and strategies of RFF and significant time was devoted to hearing from the 25 attendees what they liked about the vision and strategies and what changes they thought would make it better. This was extremely helpful input and we left with many suggestions for improving how we would go about fulfilling our Vision and strategies. The feedback was compiled and presented to the Steering Committee of RFF for discussion and many of the recommendations were affirmed and included in our future planning.
The symposium far exceeded what we had hoped for. Attendees came from Canada, United States, Jamaica, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Eastern Europe, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Columbia and the Philippines. Among the group were the first openly gay Imam in North America, the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi, representatives from the United Church of Canada and Metropolitan Community Churches, Theology Professors, activists and more. Leading up to the Parliament and the symposium, RFF raised $20,000 to cover the cost of the symposium and in particular, to sponsor five of the attendees, ensuring more diversity and international input. We are grateful to our sponsors, the United Church of Canada, Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, and various individual donors. A huge part of the success of the Symposium was due to our Partnership with Egale Canada. Egale and their staff, led by Executive Director Helen Kennedy, were all amazing. Egale also led a separate track at the symposium for educators across Ontario on Religion and LGBTI.
Additional consultation meetings were held in 2019, focusing on two areas. The first was on what would be the Values that would guide the work and culture of RFF, both locally and internationally. This was an exciting process which led to Values which were unanimously embraced throughout the organization. Our next blog article will cover these values in detail.
The second focus of the consultations was on how we would do our work both nationally and internationally in appropriate and effective ways. We brought together a dozen people who had experience in international work. Too often, people in North America have good intentions but get involved in international work in ways that are counterproductive, and sometimes viewed as being imperialistic and supporting a colonial mentality. We wanted to take time before we launched any programs to really learn from those who are doing this international work in ways that we wanted to emulate. Once again, this consultation proved extremely valuable. Having clarified our Vision at the original symposium, and now learning how to do our work appropriately, RFF is positioning itself to make a valuable and effective contribution to LGBTI safety and inclusion worldwide.