LGBT Training for Social Workers

My most recent project has been organizing an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender) Training on Gender Sensitivity for Social Workers and Psychologist - we also included medical and educational professionals.

This project initially began with a PCV who was on the GAD Board and was a lesbian that worked in social services. She worked for a homeless shelter with psychologists. One psychologist asked her what to do with clients that are gay? Because there is no formal training to work with LGBT identities. She recognized the need for such a training and collaborated with me and a team of psychologists and activists from ACCEPT (a Romanian gay rights organization) and we developed this training.

Up until 2002, being homosexual in Romania was illegal. Under the dictator regime of Ceaucescu social stigmatizisms flourish and have since paralyzed people here. Many gay people will not "come out" because there is too much fear and criticism and lack of social acceptance. My friend who is a leading gay rights activist said when he first discovered he was gay, he had people praying for the "demons of homosexuality" to leave him. When he was a little older, he was exorcised. When everything failed, he attempted suicide. Finally, he decided to accept himself and since accepting himself he's led an amazing life and career and developed a great network of friends - plus he's pretty cute so he gets a lot of boyfriends!

The goal of this project was to train social workers and psychologist who work directly with clients that may have LGBT identities to help their clients more rather than pushing them into deeper depression or towards more extreme measures like suicide. At the conference, we found that most people were open but lacked information and had many misconceptions about LGBT.

The conference participants enjoyed the training and felt that they had learned a lot from the 2-day session. This is the FIRST TIME EVER in Romania a training of this kind has been done for social workers. We're hoping that this breakthrough will be the start to more openness, acceptance, tolerance and the continuance of future trainings.

This project was sponsored by a small grant (ably managed by ME) through the Peace Corps Partnership Program. On a low budget of only $3,161 we were able to bring 26 social workers, 4 trainers and 2 PCVs from about 20 different communities all over Romania to Sighisoara for 4 days/3 nights - in order to conduct this training.

This project is by the Gender and Development Committee (GAD) of Peace Corps Romania.