From 12-19 October 2009, the beautiful city of Turin, and Arcigay, the Italian lesbian and gay organisation, played host to young LGBTQ activists from all over Europe, central Asia and South America. They gathered there for a conference on strategies, and to discover their personal answer to the question: how can we be strategic in our approach to combating homophobia?

We spent six days together, sharing our ideas, learning from each other, and most of all planning, planning and more planning – because to be strategic, we have to understand our current situation, and make suitable plans for the future. The participants were split into groups, each of which was given a country profile to work with during the week. Whilst the country names were invented, the situations they covered were very real. This gave participants the opportunity to share new suggestions of ways of tackling the situations they were presented with.

During the week, we were delighted to welcome Stephen Whittle from Transgender Europe to talk with us about trans identities and the basis of the transgender movement, and Bartek Lech from the Greens at the European Parliament who gave participants an invaluable explanation of the policy-making process at the European level.

On a free afternoon, participants were treated to a free tour of Turin in an open-topped bus, organised by Arcigay, who also arranged some fantastic parties for us at Queever, a local queer club.

The outcome of this conference is a fantastic short film which demonstrates the 11 Principles of Strategic Planning. This is currently in the editing stage, and will be available soon!

See more about the week at the blog below, and visit our website www.iglyo.com to read more the next study session in Strasbourg "Intercultural and Ethnic Diversity within LGBTQ Youth Communities" from 22nd February to 1st March 2009.