Gathering Online 2020
During the week of 19-23 October 2020, the Gathering Online explored what is at stake for LGBTI people and the LGBTI movement in Europe and Central at the moment, and identifyed ways forward for us as individuals, as organisations, and as communities.
Print HTMLWhat is the Gathering Online 2020?
This year, the ILGA-Europe Gathering Online 2020 will provide an opportunity for the European and Central Asian LGBTI movement to engage, regroup and be empowered in times of turbulence.
Currently our team is working hard to build a programme around the theme ‘Protect, Adapt, Rally’.
The aim of the event is to offer a space where LGBTI activists and their allies can come together to reflect on the larger issues currently affecting the LGBTI movement and shaping the realities of our communities in Europe and Central Asia: the COVID-19 pandemic, widening socioeconomic inequalities, further backsliding of democracy and attacks on human rights, reckoning of structural racism and other inequalities, and more.
What can you expect?
The Gathering Online will be made up of live sessions with panels and more interactive break-out sessions during which we want to foster information sharing, peer learning and strategic discussions. Most of the spaces will be open for LGBTI activists and our close allies (other NGOs, institutions and governments, funders) and a few plenary sessions will be open to a wider public with external guests. We are aiming to create as much interaction as possible on an online platform.
It is important for us to be honest with everyone. With the Gathering Online, we will not be able to replicate the ILGA-Europe Annual Conference. It is very difficult to recreate the community and bonding feel that takes place at in-person events. Organising a large event online for the first time is definitely challenging for our team, as we need to learn how to organise a large scale event online for the first time, while implementing our ongoing work in constantly changing circumstances. Whilst we will not be able to meet everybody’s expectations, we count on you to make most out of it together and use this opportunity to connect and reflect.
It is our sincere hope that in 2021, we will be in a position to again organise an event with an extensive and diverse workshop programme, with research presentations and consultation spaces, with a rich social programme, and of course lots of space of in-person networking with many new people and new actors. These things will however not be part of the Gathering Online 2020. Having said all this, the platform on which we will host our Gathering Online will provide you with opportunities to connect with each other from your own home. Organising it online offers us features that will help us to connect in different ways. We are confident that as such, we will also be offering new possibilities!
What about the AGM?
The Annual General Meeting (AGM), which is essential to our organisation’s good governance, will also take place online, immediately following the Gathering Online on 24-25 October 2020, where members where can take part in the democratic life of ILGA-Europe.
Details of the programme is published on Whova platform for the participants, but here is a summary of our programme.
We had three sessions during The Gathering Online 2020 that was open to members of the public who were not registered to be at the entire event.
Read more about the statutory Annual General Meeting for members of ILGA-Europe, which is essential to our organisation’s governance and ILGA-Europe's democratic life.
