Learnings from Orang Laut & LGBT Communities

What are the key takeaways from today's journey lessons:

Developmental justice is severely lacking across the region and the world. Culture, heritage and indigenous rights are not respected or prioritised in the name of urbanisation and excessive development. This approach is very authoritarian and indignifying to many communities trying to preserve their histories and traditional livelihoods. It's such a shame to see the resulting homogeneity and loss of diversity as a result.

On the other hand, in terms of LGBTQIA+ rights, while legislation has 'evolved' to not discriminate against 'non-mainstream' sexualities and gender identities, protection, among other significant legal mechanisms is severely lacking.

In both sessions, community as a central theme is apparent- as both a source of strength and identity to support the collective and individual. Maintaining or highlighting these forms of communities may face challenges or setbacks in some aspects, but collective power and organising can mean a great difference, especially in a world that tries to break us down into hyper-individualistic bubbles.

What would I like to know more:

I don't think I have any clearly defined points of what I would like to learn more about. The concept and approach of community building and organising is something I find really important, and I'm eager to learn more beyond what I can perceive. After all, we don't know what we don't know, and I'd be keen to dig deeper into these different experiences of other communities through their own experiences to see what big or small lessons and stories I can pick up.