During the love Ghana Charity festival held in Denmark, IFU hosted a workshop with Ed Hanson from LGBT+ Rights Ghana, and Heine Bravie, who has volunteered with the organisation.
They told their story about not being able to go directly to a meeting because the location must be kept a secret. And having to check everyone you engage with in your business activities to make sure that they do not report you to authorities. This is already the reality of the queer activist community in Ghana. And a new law being considered in the Ghanaian parliament could potentially put an even harder pressure on the queer community.
LGBT+ Rights Ghana started out as a small cyber activist group in 2018, and today, it has become a big organization with a community emergency response team, a religious advocacy group, emergency housing, community safe spaces, podcast productions, information campaigns, and much more.
Helping LGBT+ people becoming job creators
ED Hanson and Heine Brave emphasised that the queer community in Ghana is under severe pressure and the mainstream story being told is that queer people are a burden and do not contribute to society. The situation is almost impossible, as LGBT+ persons either cannot get a job if they in any way express their sexual orientation or are laid off if they are revealed as queer.
To disprove the general beliefs and the political propaganda, LGBT+ Rights Ghana has started a new initiative called Impact Queer Ghana. It’s a skills-sharing and economic empowerment project aimed at helping queer people become job creators in their local communities, thereby showing that they are positive contributors to society and local development.
The workshop also included an interesting open discussion of what IFU can do as an investor by focusing on human rights terms and conditions regarding LGBTQI issues in Ghana and elsewhere.