Creative Advocacy & Training
The Creative Advocacy & Training program equips educators, artists, activists, and community leaders with the tools to use storytelling, creative expression, and cultural work as powerful forms of human-rights advocacy.
Through workshops, curriculum resources, and facilitated learning spaces, African Queer Voices supports individuals and organizations working with African and diasporic communities to engage issues of gender identity, sexuality, migration, trauma, displacement, and belonging in ways that are ethical, inclusive, and grounded in lived experience.
Drawing on African queer writing, performance, and community knowledge, this program helps participants move beyond abstract discussion toward culturally rooted, meaningful engagement. Participants learn to use narrative, poetry, theatre, and personal testimony as tools for dialogue, healing, and social change.
By strengthening the capacity of those who teach, lead, and advocate, AQV ensures that African queer stories are not only preserved, but actively used to shape more just and informed communities.
Community Healing & Artist Support
Through this program, African Queer Voices creates safe and affirming spaces where writers, artists, and community members can connect, reflect, and heal through storytelling and creative expression. This includes mentorship, writing circles, creative workshops, peer support, and opportunities for artists to develop and share their work in supportive environments.
Many African queer people, particularly those affected by migration, conflict, criminalization, and social stigma, carry deep personal and collective trauma. Community Healing & Artist Support recognizes that creativity is not only a form of expression, but also a pathway to resilience, dignity, and survival.
By investing in both the creative and human needs of the community, AQV helps ensure that African queer voices are not only heard, but sustained.
Artist Mentorship & Development
The Artist Mentorship & Development program supports emerging African queer writers, performers, and visual artists to grow their creative practice, build confidence, and develop sustainable artistic careers.
Many African LGBTQ+ creatives face barriers that go far beyond talent, including discrimination, lack of access to training, limited professional networks, financial instability, and isolation. This program exists to bridge those gaps by pairing artists with experienced mentors and providing spaces where creativity, identity, and community can thrive together.
Through one-on-one mentorship, group workshops, peer learning, and creative exchanges, AQV helps artists refine their craft while also navigating the realities of working as queer creatives in African and diasporic contexts. Participants receive guidance in writing, performance, visual storytelling, publishing, grant writing, and professional development, alongside emotional and community-centered support.
This program also connects artists to opportunities for publication, exhibition, performance, and collaboration, ensuring that African queer voices are not only nurtured, but actively shared with wider audiences.
By investing in artists at critical stages of their development, Artist Mentorship & Development strengthens both individual careers and the broader ecosystem of African queer cultural expression.
Creative Storytelling Workshops
The Creative Storytelling Workshops program provides African queer writers, artists, and community members with safe, affirming spaces to explore their stories through writing, theatre, poetry, and visual expression.
These workshops are designed for people whose voices have often been silenced or marginalized, including LGBTQ+ individuals affected by displacement, stigma, trauma, and social exclusion. Through guided creative sessions, participants are supported to reflect on their lives, transform personal experiences into art, and build confidence in sharing their stories.
Facilitated by artists, writers, and community practitioners, the workshops combine creative practice with emotional and community-centered care. Participants develop skills in storytelling, performance, and creative communication while also experiencing the healing power of being seen, heard, and understood.
Creative Storytelling Workshops are offered both in-person and online, making them accessible to participants across Africa and the diaspora. They serve as entry points into AQV’s wider creative ecosystem, often leading into mentorship, publication, and collaborative projects.
By nurturing storytelling as a form of both art and healing, this program strengthens individual voices while building collective memory and cultural connection within African queer communities.
Community Healing & Advocacy
The Community Healing & Advocacy program supports African LGBTQ+ communities to heal from trauma, build collective strength, and advocate for dignity, safety, and human rights through storytelling and cultural expression.
Across Africa and in the diaspora, queer people experience criminalization, displacement, family rejection, violence, and deep social isolation. This program recognizes that healing and justice are inseparable, and that communities cannot fully advocate for their rights without spaces to process pain, build trust, and reconnect with their sense of worth and belonging.
Through facilitated dialogues, creative circles, peer-support spaces, and community storytelling, African Queer Voices provides platforms where individuals can share lived experiences, connect with others, and transform personal struggles into collective power. These spaces are trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and rooted in care.
Community Healing & Advocacy also links local and diaspora voices to global human-rights spaces. Stories emerging from these community processes inform AQV’s advocacy in international forums, policy conversations, and cultural institutions, ensuring that African queer experiences are represented by those who live them.
By centering healing as a foundation for advocacy, this program strengthens communities not only to survive, but to speak, organize, and shape the narratives that affect their lives.
UN Engagement & Global Advocacy
The UN Engagement & Global Advocacy program ensures that African queer voices are present, respected, and represented in international human-rights spaces where global policies and priorities are shaped.
African Queer Voices participates in United Nations dialogues, civil-society consultations, and international advocacy forums to bring the lived realities of African LGBTQ+ communities into global decision-making. These spaces often influence asylum policy, development funding, human-rights reporting, and diplomatic engagement, yet African queer people are frequently excluded or spoken about without being heard.
AQV works to change that by centering community-rooted storytelling, research, and creative expression in advocacy spaces. Testimonies, artistic work, and community-generated narratives are used to highlight issues such as criminalization, forced displacement, access to healthcare, freedom of expression, and the safety of LGBTQ+ people across African contexts.
This program also builds bridges between grassroots communities and international institutions, ensuring that global conversations are informed by those most affected. Through partnerships with human-rights organizations, cultural institutions, and UN-affiliated platforms, AQV contributes to more inclusive and accountable policy environments.
By bringing African queer stories into global forums, UN Engagement & Global Advocacy strengthens both visibility and impact, transforming personal experience into collective advocacy and structural change.