Social Work with People Practicing Same-Sex ... - ILGA Europe

Seminar on Community
Mobilization, 2008
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4. Development of strategic vision of organizational development in its key
objectives.
5. Organization of activities to inform both the community and key stakeholders
about the establishment of organization and its objectives.
Challenges
1. Difficulties with the distribution of responsibilities and procedures to delegate
the leaders' authorities.
2. Usurpation of power and the lack of a balanced structure.
3. Unreadiness of the community members to invest personal resources in the
organization (temporary resources, social resources, membership fees).
It is small personal contributions of the community members that often are the
important criteria that determine the vital need in such a group/organization.
4. Problems with registration of an LGBT organization.
5. Low professional level to resolve legal, organizational and administrative issues.
6. Lack of community spokesmen in the field. To speak about the initiative group with
the media or government officials means to announce oneself as a representative
of a marginalized and stigmatized group. Not all leaders of IG are ready to such
coming out, but such readiness can be developed in the process of organizational
growth. At the same time, the voices of professionals are not always perceived by
the community as an objective vision of their situation. People, who read a lot,
who are familiar with the problem and have experience of speaking in public can
become such spokesmen.
7. Work with the closed groups — a question whether to admit ”strangers“ into the
group is relevant for many such groups.
Structuring of a Civil Society Organization (CSO)
When an initiative group is overcoming growth-related problems and has a good
leadership and enjoys the community support, it can grow into a civil society
organization. Functioning of IG and CSO differs in both task setting and operational
methods.
Objectives
• Detalization of the goals and objectives
of the team.
• Distribution of roles and functions in
the team.
• Registration of the organization.
• “About us — to outer world”.
Challenges
• Difficulties with the distribution of
responsibilities.
• Usurpation of power and the lack of a
balanced structure.
• Problems with registration of
homosexual organization.
Methods
• Discussion of the functional
organizational structure.
• Development of procedures and
statute.
• Elections.
• Development of the strategic
operational action plan.
• Implementation of PR activities.
Technical support
• Document templates (statute,
functional structure).
• Training on organizational
development.
• Training on team building and
structuring.