Welcome to Gayvibes!

I thought of introducing myself and my work as the first blog on Gayvibes, since I am really excited about this website and what it has in store for everyone joining this new online community.

First of all, I am Federico Podeschi, a gay-rights activist and social entrepreneur that has lived in Wales for the last 11 years.  I recently launched the LGBT Excellence Centre Wales (a social enterprise for people who identify as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender) and I am also president of LGBT San Marino (a similar organisation based in the country I come from).  I am also Honorary Consul for the Republic of San Marino in Wales, which is a brand new appointment to raise awareness about the Republic of which I am a very proud citizen and to have the opportunity to bring together the two countries that I love the most: San Marino and Wales.

I have been campaigning for gay rights for a long time and joined Stonewall as a Discrimination Law Officer in 2005, yet I wanted to reach out more with my work and help as many people as possible that experience discrimination and bad treatment because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

That's how I ended up setting up my social enterprise.  I am grateful to Debbie Lane and the LGBT Cymru Helpline, for offering me the opportunity to have a platform to launch my ideas and projects and built on the resouces and achievements of this community group to develop my dream organisation.

A year and a half down the road, some dreams have already come true and some others are starting to materialise, like this website.  It is such an exciting time to see how things are developing!

Earlier on this year, the LGBT Excellence Centre Wales was awarded funding from the Equality and Human Rights Commission to deliver legal advice and representation to LGBT people, making the Excellence Centre the youngest in the UK to receive funding and the only one to specifically provide this service for LGBT people.

More recently, I have developed a workshop tackling homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools, which was piloted in 4 schools in Cardiff with amazing support from Cardiff County Council.  The workshop was part of a wider programme that Cardiff is rolling out to tackle bullying and discrimination in their schools, but the first one in Wales to be delivered to the whole Year 9 in the schools that took part.  This workshop, including presentation, videos, theatre performances, competitions, and handouts has already received a lot of interest from other local authorities and is now trying to attract funding in order to deliver it to all schools in Wales free-of-charge. 

Would it not be great if Wales rolled out such an amazing programme and became the first country in the world to have taken such a strong stand against homophobia and transphobia and set an example to everyone else?

There are so many activities, projects, and ideas that I'll use my blog to tell you about and I hope to get some support from you to keep going with the Excellence Centre and my work.

Please fell free to comment and to let me know what you think, good or bad, it all helps me getting an idea of what people want and if I don't get it right, then I want to make sure I can do something about it!

I hope you enjoy watching this website grow and that you can really help making a difference to other by just being here and using it!

Ciao! Federico

PS A big thank you to: Chris for the enormous effort put in planning and developing this website, Gareth for the amazing skill and patience in dealing with me and the website, Jeff for transfering my calls and your help in putting this together! You all have made one of my dreams come true! Also, Debbie for your support and appreciation, Karen for your great effort and expertise, Jay for your love, and mum just for being my mum! ;) 

Tags: LGBT Excellence Centre Gay Rights Discrimination San Marino

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