Geelong hosts national LGBTIQA+ conference

HUNDREDS of people gathered at GMHBA Stadium last week for the sixth National LGBTIQA+ Conference, Better Together.

More than 800 people from across Australia attended the event, running from June 14 until June 15, exploring the issues facing the LGBTIQA+ community.

Better Together, run by The Equality Project, included more than 115 sessions where attendees came together for panels, workshops, training sessions and more as they discussed important topics.

The Equality Project chief executive officer Jason Tuazon-McCheyne said it was exciting to see a full house at the Geelong event.

“It’s just a really wonderful opportunity to have the national community connect together, share what’s going on, listen to each other and foster greater collaboration.

“We were able to have hard conversations with each other in sessions that I don’t think we’ve had before.

“We had literally people from all over the country, every state and territory, every part of the community, participating and we provided over 50 per cent of our attendees with the scholarship to attend.”

This was the first year the conference has been held in Geelong and featured guest speakers as well as performances by the ABBA Museum choir from Sweden.

The Equality Project is a national health promotion charity that runs several programmes and help organisations improve their knowledge and understanding in the rainbow community space.

Mr Tuazon-McCheyne said the charity had a hypothesis of change.

“We gather people together who are different to each other, including allies as well, in the hope when they meet each other, they might like each other and decide they will collaborate together and work together to get the work done to create change.”

The 2025 national conference will be held in Adelaide in October.

For more information on The Equality Project, head to theequalityproject.org.au