CamASEAN Youth’s Future is a youth-led initiative that promotes inclusive communities through positive storytelling and community-led programs for marginalized groups, including older LGBT persons and differently-abled persons in rural villages in Cambodia.
The organization’s “Rainbow Life Museum” campaign aims to empower older Khmer people with diverse gender identities or sexual orientations to organize within their communities and claim their narratives by openly telling their stories through holding their own “Rainbow Village Exhibition.”
The Rainbow Life Museum is a passion project by the organization that started with identifying their “champions.” One of the first champions they identified was an elderly couple, with one of the individuals being transgender, who had been together for more than 40 years and had received the support and acceptance of their families, friends, village leaders, and commune council or local government. The couple organized a community meeting in their house in the presence of neighbors and friends, commune leaders, Buddhist monks, and Christian priests.
“Such positive stories have a great capacity to promote visibility, acceptance, and understanding of LGBTQ communities in Cambodia. They also provide young people with positive representations, which are still so rare. It is an effective way to build connections between social and age groups,” Srun Sorn, founder of CamASEAN Youth’s Future, explains.
Since their early days, the campaign has now extended to 25 villages in 12 provinces, gathering over 100 photographs of individuals and couples in rural Cambodia. The campaign brings to the villages the message “love the same.”
The campaign also has a digital reach as the village discussions are streamed live on Facebook and the testimonies and pictures are disseminated on social media.
The campaign can potentially be an advocacy tool that could change the law through evidence-based testimonies. CamASEAN Youth’s Future takes pride in this bottom-up approach that allows community members to share their own story and ignite change from the grassroots, at almost zero cost.
Similar campaigns
This powerful campaign used the stories of older LGBTIQ people to increase queer visibility and foster community acceptance. Similar campaigns have also centered on our queer elders:
Mitini Nepal, a leading LGBTIQ organization in Nepal, worked with LGBTI seniors to create the “Our Lives, Our Stories: LGBTI Seniors in Nepal.” This eye-opening storybook offers a glimpse into the lives of ten individuals, ages 52 to 70, who identify as sexual and gender minorities. To put their stories in the spotlight, the organization also released video testimonies and launched the book in a public storytelling event.
Colombia: “If my differences bother you, your indifference hurts me”
In 2017, the city government of Bogota launched a campaign putting older LGBTIQ people front and center in a series of posters, videos, and podcasts. This campaign does not just tell their stories, it also puts faces to the stories, addressing the invisibility of older LGBTIQ people in our communities.
This campaign and education program aims to support organizations and individuals to understand the needs of LGBTQ adults, through striking public awareness posters, workshops, and other resources. By using this proverb in a positive and affirming way, the campaign effectively delivers its message: LGBTIQ people have a place in our families.
SAGE is the oldest and largest organization advocating for the rights of LGBTIQ seniors in the United States. Their (in)visible campaign in 2020 brought photos of older LGBTIQ individuals and couples to billboards in Times Square during the 2020 NYC World Pride.
