Introduction - RainbowBC 1997 Conference Report

1.0 Introduction

The 1997 Rainbow BC Conference "Safely Out" was held October 11-12 in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. The project was funded by the Province of British Columbia , the Ministry of the Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism, Immigration and Human Rights, the British Columbia Human Rights Commission, and the Ministry of Women's Equality. We gratefully acknowledge that their assistance resulted in this successful and productive conference.

Almost 70 members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) communities and their allies from throughout BC attended the two day conference. The task of participants was to focus on the manifestation of, and strategies to prevent and eliminate, hate activities against, and within, LGBT communities.

More specifically, the goals of the conference were:

to provide a venue in which members of LGBT communities could safely discuss their experiences with hate activity;
to identify the manifestation of, and strategies to prevent and eliminate, hate activities;
to identify strategies already in place to deal with hate activity and note their effectiveness;
to explore the development of new collaborative strategies to deal with hate activity; and,
to provide recommendations to the Ministries and the Commission.

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