<< GALE Foundation GALE Association >>

Training and upcoming workshops

Sexual Diversity in Schools

This training for teachers and peer educators focuses on how you can deal with homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and transphobia in personal contacts and in the classroom. It also gives attention to how you can structurally integrate an LGBTI-policy in schools, including an effective antibullying policy and an integrated curriculum. Want to know when the next course is offered? Subscribe to the GALE Training mailing list.

Get funding for this course!
European participants can get a grant from the European Community (Erasmus+ KA1) to get their costs funded. The application cannot be done by individuals, but must be done by an organization. GALE offers you an example of how you can fill in the application and also offers example draft texts you could use in your application. But make sure to tailor your application to your organization's needs!

Participants' comments on this training:

  • I was a quite intensive training, and it was good we had some time to relax after the course, as it was given in Spain during the summer. But it was good, really good. I went home with a head full of ideas and inspiration on how to proceed in my school (a teacher from a teacher training institute, Netherlands, 2016)
  • What I really liked about the training, was the broad perspective on how to deal with diversity. The course starts with homophobia and transphobia, and you really start to understand how these exclusion processes work and how you can fight them. But after a while you start to ask the question: we are talking about homophobia and sexism, but it seems this is also valid for many other discriminations. When the trainer said: "that is exactly the point" , this was the big learning revelation for me. Suddenly I understood that the mechanisms behind discriminations are more important to fight than the superficial manifestations. I don't have to choose to fight racism first and get to transphobia only when a whole range of other, and always considered more important issues are resolved. It's all one thing. (teacher from a secondary school, UK, 2017)
  • This training was really fun to do because it was packed with interactive exercises and games that I can also use in class. (a male participant in an international summer school for peer-educators, France, 2010)
  • I enjoyed this training, but it was also confronting for me. Especially in the role-play in which we were challenged to answer prejudiced questions and I realized I actually agreed with the question. I did not know how to respond to: "Why are lesbians always behaving like men? I hate that!" I am lesbian but I do not look like that at all and I actually sometimes feel irritated by lesbians who look like that. But I don't want to drag them down by agreeing with a clearly hateful student like that. It make me realize I also have to learn to deal myself with some diversity issues as well... This training helped me to make a step in this. (a female participant in a local peer-education group training, Germany, 2009)
  • Yes, we talk a lot about our situation. And we feel very powerless in the face of censorship laws and increasing traditionalism and violence. We considered the authorities and most of the churches as enemies even when we are part of the church and the State. But this training has helped us to reflect on our situation and recognize how our internal stories as victims make us behave as victims. This de-empowers us and makes a dialogue in church difficult. We started to redevelop our testimonials and storytelling into more strategic tools of change. (a male participant in an international training on using storytelling for empowerment and advocacy in churches in Eastern Europe, Kiev, 2013)
  • I first was skeptic about the introduction of this "Western" storytelling in an Asian country. We don't need coming-out, everybody knows I am Waria (transgender) and I am very visible. The problem is that the public despises Waria and our education needs to correct that. Then it turned out that GALE is not at all focusing on coming-out as a main emancipation strategy and we seriously looked at how we could develop a unique way of storytelling in Indonesia. A large part of the training was about how to engage in a dialogue with students. This is difficult in Asia. We are not used to discuss issues on which we might disagree, we rather keep silent. This is also what schools teach: keep silent. But I do realize now that our sessions will not be effective enough when we will just do speeches. So we develop some typical Indonesian conversation techniques to start discussing this. (a transgender participant in a national training to develop the first peer-education program in Indonesia, 2013)

Regular training offers (on request)

The GALE Foundation offers training in five areas:

  1. teacher training / peer education training
  2. strategic workshops
  3. school consultancy
  4. research on sexual diversity in schools

Upcoming trainings are mentioned immediately below. When you want to be informed about international trainings by GALE, register for the GALE Training List.

Teacher training & peer education training

When you educate about about sexual diversity to combat homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and transphobia, you are likely to get some prejudiced responses. This is why it is not enough to give "information" because prejudiced participants are often not open for information that challenges their biased opinions. So our first tasks is to help frightened and angry people to open up. The core of the GALE Foundation trainings is how a teacher, trainer or educator can deal with the negative responses of students or adult course participants.
We try to offer a 5-day training every year.

This training for teachers and peer educators focuses on how you can deal with homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and transphobia in personal contacts and in the classroom. It also gives attention to how you can structurally integrate an LGBTI-policy in schools, including an effective antibullying policy and an integrated curriculum. In 2019, GALE offers this 5-day training in Barcelona, Spain (1-5 April). Read the description and how to register here. This is the registration form.

Get funding for this course!

European participants can get a grant from the European Community (Erasmus+ KA1) to get their costs funded. The application cannot be done by individuals, but must be done by an organization. GALE offers you an example of how you can fill in the application and also offers example draft texts you could use in your application. But make sure to tailor your application to your organization's needs!


Strategic workshops

The objective of strategic workshops is to assess the level of implementation of the right to education for LGBTI students by the State, to analyze the opportunities to enhance the situation and to guide a cooperation between sectors.
Ideally, the participants are 30% from the government, 30% from key positions in the education sector and 30% educational experts from LGBTI organizations. In most cases, this ideal is not feasible. In such cases, it is best to look for at least some distribution across sectors.
Strategic workshops usually take one day, but can be minimized to 4 hours or elaborated to two days. Here you van download a model program of a one day strategic workshop. However, a good program works best when it is tailored to the actual participants.
The GALE Foundation can offer facilitation of a number of strategic workshops for free until the end of 2016. We thank the Dutch government for making this possible. GALE gives priority to countries with a good potential for change and a willingness to engage in the international coalition for LGBTI policy the Dutch government is helping to create

Participants' comments on strategic workshops:

  • The training gave me a sense of solace, it was a healing experience. We sometimes feel so overpowered, so lost and so alone in this struggle. Now I realize we are not alone. Even our "enemies" may feel the same sense of threat. This gives me new power to reach out. (a female participant in a training for a coalition of Korean activists, 2013)
  • Our organization has a strong sense of purpose, but a membership is diverse and everybody want to be engaged in everything. This training made us a better understanding that "strategic planning" means making choices and limiting yourself to be more effective. (a male participant in a strategic planning training for the European Platform of LGBT Christians)

School consultancy

For schools and activist consultants GALE offers training on how to make their schools safer and how to improve their diversity policy. Of course we focus on sexual diversity, but the starting points and methods and easily applicable to school safety on the hole and dealing with diversity in general. Still, our training is quite different from regular "diversity trainings" because it goes more in depth about social exclusion and how to tackle it in schools and youth organizations. The content of the training focuses on school management and strategically planning a comprehensive change. 

Participants' comments on this training:

  • I thought I was already doing a quite good job at teaching about homosexuality because I am very sensitive to kids excluding each other. Now I realize that being friendly and sensitive is not be enough because there are social norms at work that I need to discuss in class. Actually, I am glad our principal took part in the training because we cannot tackle this issue with single teaching sessions. ( a female teacher and care coordinator at an International school in Amsterdam, 2013)

Research on sexual diversity in schools

The research training helps you to make a start with developing your own research plan and to develop your own research tools. During this tailored development of your own plans, we go through the choices you have to make and the pitfalls you should avoid.

Participants' comments on this training:

  • I was most interested in how to make a good questionnaire. But during the course I found out that the choices I have to make before I even choose to work with a statistical survey are so fundamental. (a female activist after the international research course in Riga, 2014)
  • I am very concerned with intersectionality. I want to make sure that my interventions cater not only for gay men but also for lesbian, bisexuals, and transgenders. And I want to take into account what age and cultural background my students have. The course clarified for me how I can make choices in questions about gender, sexual orientation and other background factors. And I started to think about how I deal with the dilemma that I want to ask many questions about gender, while students may find it difficult to understand anything beyond the male/female binary. (a trans activist, 2014)