PRESS RELEASE The IDAHOT campaign starts today: LOVE MAKES A FAMILY

Today, on the 3 May, on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia/Biphobia/Transphobia (IDAHOT) we launch the Sarajevo Open Centre’s campaign called LOVE MAKES A FAMILY.

The campaign includes two different media: billboards and social media. By its concept the campaign draws attention to the need of support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex persons in their primary families, but also says that love makes a family, whether it comes from the primary family or our partners and friends.

24 people participate in the campaign and together they say that love makes a family in all its shapes and forms. For the first time in BiH LGBTI persons are participants in a campaign, together with their friends, supporters and families.

We all need support, it is very important to us because with it we can overcome more easily the obstacles we deal with on a daily basis, so we point out that where there is love, there is solidarity, support and family.

In the scope of the social media campaign, besides the photographs that we will publish in the next two weeks, we will put statements of the people on the photos on what is family, support and love to them.

One of the campaign participants says: Family should be a magic circle of strength, love and support that by each new birth grows and unites us. In the end, to have love and support is very significant, but to have it in your family means having it all.

In the last couple of years more and more LGBTI persons suffer violence in the family. Parents, sisters, brothers and other family members have imprisoned, forced to treatment, thrown out of home and continuously abused, threatened and attacked them.

The family should primarily be the place of support and understanding, and not a place of rejection and suffering. That is why, in circumstances like these, it is very important to support LGBTI persons in the family, among friends, acquaintances and partners.

You can follow the online campaign on the Facebook page of Sarajevo Open Centre.

Contact person: Lejla Huremović, lejla@soc.ba, 033 551 000.