Activist Academy

Online Edition

We crossed borders for IGLYO’s Activist Academy and opened up registrations for all young activists worldwide.

IGLYO’s Activist Academy is an intensive skills-based training programme for young people in Europe who have a strong interest in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex rights.

The programme began on Thursday 17 June where we all met online, found out more about each other, and learned how the Activist Academy will work.

We started the following week with three interactive masterclasses led by experts within the global LGBTQI movement. We learned how to write and deliver powerful speeches or prepare a strong statement, how to design and implement an effective online campaign, and how to grab people’s attention and build support for important issues through messaging and graphic design.

Once you’ve completed all the training courses, you put what you’ve learnt into practice and translate your new skills and knowledge into action by undertaking three real-life challenges over the course of a week. There will be a full group check-in session before the week is over to share your achievements and challenges with other teams and re-motivate yourselves to finish the course.

Once your three challenges are ready, you’ll receive constructive feedback from our team of judges, so you can make any final changes and improvements to them.

All your finished products will be uploaded on the Academy website and can be viewed by all Academy participants and each team and the judges can vote for their favourite entries. The team with the highest overall score will share a prize worth €750. Everyone who completes the course, though, is a winner. Each person who has attended all workshops and completed all the challenges will receive a gift voucher worth €50. The Academy Trophy will be announced during the final live session of the Academy.

As well as learning a whole host of new skills, you’ll get the chance to meet and connect with other young activists from around the world and become part of the growing network of Activist Academy Alumni- an international group of young leaders and change-makers.

Previous Academy participants have described the experience as life-changing and have left with strong friendships and connections. Many participants have also taken on new personal and professional challenges or secured employment partly as a result of their involvement.

IGLYO is co-funded by the Rights Equality and Citizenship (REC) programme 2014-2020 of the European Union and the Government of the Netherlands. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of IGLYO and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission or the Government of the Netherlands.