Opened in February 2008 as part of a collaborative effort between the city’s LGBT NGOs, the Beijing LGBT Center is entirely community-funded. In January, it is selling a new Beijing Men Calendar, packed with sexy photos (such as the one pictured) to raise money. We talk to the centre’s programme manager Stephen Leonelli.
Tell us more about the centre…
Our work falls into three main categories: we offer group therapy and one-on-one psychological consultation with our accredited clinical psychologist; we have education and advocacy programmes, such as our Campus LGBT Speaker’s Bureau (see LGBT feature); and we put on social activities, such as our Saturday movie night and our discussion groups about LGBT topics.
How do you raise money?
The centre currently relies completely on community fundraising to support its work. The main source is ‘Gay Night’ at Alfa Bar (see Nightlife listings) every Friday evening, where 20RMB of the 30RMB cover charge is donated to the centre. In addition, we organise large-scale parties every few months. And, from January, we are also selling the Beijing Men Calendar for 20RMB (available to buy from the centre). We do make a small profit from some of these activities but this is really only a small fraction of our annual budget. The other notable source of funding is our board of directors. We would like to begin applying to foreign foundations and others for grants, but we need more volunteers to help with this first!
What work can volunteers do?
With only three full-time staff members, we rely on volunteers to maintain our programme operations and develop new initiatives. We need people to do outreach at events outside the centre, as well as help plan and organise events with our community partners. We also regularly need help with translation (direct text translation, English refining, and interpreter translation), event publicity, posters and graphic design, as well as grant-writing and research. For more details, please contact me directly at lisidi.bjlgbt@gmail.com. Our next big recruitment is planned for February.
Open 10am-6pm Wednesday-Sunday (from Wednesday-Friday, call in advance to check that a staff member or volunteer is available to help you).