The Queer Development Agency
Many Coloured Sky takes a community development and skills building approach to empower individuals, groups, and organisations. We work at the intersections to broaden support for, and the impact of, LGBTIQ+ initiatives, undertaking projects both in Australia and internationally.
What We Do
Organisational Development & Capacity Building
- Program development
- Co-facilitation and co-delivery
- Critical friend
- Mentoring
- Organisational development & governance support
- Networking & connections to philanthropy, government, stakeholders
- Program evaluation
Sector Development & Awareness Raising
- Action research
- Digital storytelling & promotion
- Advocacy
- Catalyse hidden/emerging issues
- Evidence base & media promotion
- Reports & resource development
- Partnership grant seeking
- Engaging academic stakeholders
- Mainstream resource leveraging for LGBTQI+ issues
Stakeholder & Ally Engagement
- Building & maintaining stakeholder/ally networks
- Leveraging stakeholder/ally support
- Cross-sectoral capacity building in philanthropy, academia, education, community sectors
- Promoting inclusive policy and practice development
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.