The increased level of LGBTQ community activities have masked the challenges that faced by the community workers or activists from the LGBTQ community. People assumed that resources are always available, commercial or public venues are always welcoming, corporate partners are fighting to give money and a 2 hrs workshop is very easy to organise. I do not speak for all and I shall only talk about my experience in Oogachaga. To many, Oogachaga appears to have all the resources to employ 5 staff, a large pool of volunteers and a physical space. What people do not realise that the resources are spread very very thinly when one has to run daily and regular services. Let me give you an example to illustrate how little we have. A typical FSC employs about 30 staff to serve a population of 150,000 to 200,000. Imagine serving the same size with 5 staff. A FSC also has an advantage of locating in a void deck or community centre at a lower rent, and focused on serving residents within a 5 km radius area. Oogachaga cannot do that and has to be centrally located. Not being a National Council of Social Service member, we cannot apply to use VWO space and got to rent commercial space. It also means we do not receive support in term of staff or volunteer training, infrastructure and technical support. All these mean that the staff and volunteers have to wear multiple hats and find creative ways to resolve issues. Our junior staff members, typically a fresh tertiary or university graduate also have shorter and steeper learning curve. Being a sole specialised social service provider also means that the organisation is confronted with concentrated level of diverse needs. Where possible, we try to meet these needs; we also make it a point to include LGBTQ partners at our public interactions so that the diverse voices of the community can be heard and not limited to our own social service providers lens. We also acknowledged that we do not have all the expertise, knowledge or capacity to run these services and launch Take Action contest, so that we can support those who wish to do something for their own community. Yet, those who commented that their community is underserved by Oogachaga or other groups, never take up this offer to address the needs they highlighted. To our disappointment, we even had one winner from an underserved community, took the cash prize and did nothing to deliver the proposal, and to which we have revised the rules in the subsequent contests. I explained to someone that Oogachaga is developed into a structured organisation simply because the nature of professional work requires it, but it does not mean we can do everything. For example, we do not want to organise Eat-Durians-At-Segamat trips because that is not in our mission. (This request is in my head all these years because we have received it annually.) We are very grateful that there are more LGBTQ groups these days to cater to these growing needs, and we are happy to support in any possible way. These positive developments also mean that Oogachaga can look at new areas of work, such as start talking to stakeholders outside the community. I shall end with this: If you realised that there is a missing gap in the community and no one else have the capacity to work on it, or the knowledge to address it, would you consider stepping up to it?
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 13:10:42 +0000
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