THE QUEER DEVELOPMENT AGENCY

Many Coloured Sky takes a community development and skills building approach to empower individuals, groups and organisations and assist them to meet their goals. We work with organisations at the intersections and engage potential allies to broaden support for, and the impact of, LGBTQI initiatives. We undertake projects both in Australia and internationally.

WHAT WE DO

ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CAPACITY BUILDING

  • program development

  • co-facilitation and co-delivery

  • critical friend

  • mentoring

  • organisational development and governance support

  • networking and building connections to philanthropy, government and key stakeholders

  • program evaluation

SECTOR DEVELOPMENT AND AWARENESS RAISING

  • action research

  • digital storytelling and promotion

  • advocacy

  • catalyse – bringing resources and attention to unpopular causes and hidden and emerging issues

  • building an evidence base

  • media promotion

  • reports and resource development

  • partnership grant seeking

  • engaging academic stakeholders

  • leveraging mainstream resources and effort to LGBTQI+ issues

STAKEHOLDER AND ALLY ENGAGEMENT

  • building and maintaining stakeholder and ally networks

  • leveraging stakeholder and ally support

  • cross-sectoral capacity building in philanthropy, academia, education and community sectors 

  • promoting and building inclusive policy and practice across development and community service sectors

OUR PRINCIPLES AND COMMITMENTS

We acknowledge that much of our work takes place on lands forcibly taken from Indigenous peoples. In Australia and internationally we recognise that these acts were immoral and wrong, and that harm continues to be done to Indigenous peoples, their cultures and their lands where these issues have not been fully addressed and rectified. We commit to working in ways that are not colonising, acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

 

We understand that human rights are universal and indivisible, and that it is therefore urgent that all people can exercise their rights. The rights of every individual are bound up with the rights of everybody else.

 

We work from community development principles and recognise the crucial importance of self-determination, participation and community ownership.

 

We believe that marginalisation and discrimination grow from social, political, economic and cultural inequalities within and between societies, nations and populations and that fixing challenges such as poverty and hate crime require us to change the systems, not the victims of these systems.

 

We work at the nexus of community development, human rights advocacy and social work, drawing on the strengths of a multidisciplinary approach to understand and address complex challenges. We may work to develop, support, challenge, improve and scale-up service delivery in and for our partner communities, but we are not a service delivery organisation.

 

We embed gender equality and anti-racist principles into our projects, partnerships and practices. We recognise multiple forms of privilege and commit to using our own privilege to make the world more equal. We recognise that children and vulnerable adults require special protections, and that these protections should not stifle their opportunities for genuine participation.

 

We commit to maintaining a small environmental footprint and to working in ways that protect and restore natural environments, and acknowledge that we live and work during a time of climate and ecosystem emergency.

 

We believe in equity, not charity, in collaboration, not competition, in amplifying the voices and building the capacity of those affected by the issues we address, and in the transformative power of long-lasting, deep and trusting relationships. We recognise that we must continue to listen, to learn and to walk alongside others in solidarity and shared hope.