MANILA, March 28, 2014: GALANG Founding Director, Anne Lim, nominated for Baldwin Award

It is with great honor that GALANG announces the nomination by The Fund for Global Human Rights of its Founding Director, Anne Lim, for the 2014 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty. The award, established in 1989, is granted every two years in recognition of human rights organizations or activists outside the US. The winner will receive a US$25,000 grant in acknowledgement of the nominees’ meaningful contributions to the promotion of human rights and the very real risks these brave people undertake in their advocacy for the equality, respect, and well-being of marginalized people the world over.

Anne Lim co-founded GALANG in 2008 in order to empower poor lesbians, bisexual women, and trans men (LBTs) living in the slums of Metro Manila to advocate on their own behalf with regard to education, legal and political awareness, and economic independence. A lesbian herself, Lim recognized that existing programs intended to reposition women as agents of social progress often overlooked, or outright rejected, LBTs, who face aggregate discriminations for failing to comply with proscribed sex roles. In the years since its inception, GALANG has helped to form lesbian partner organizations in the communities of Pansol, Bagbag, Krus na Ligas, Botocan, UP Campus, and Batasan Hills, and each with its own leadership, goals, and strategies to serve the specific needs of the LBTs in these locales.

GALANG offers its sincere appreciation to The Fund for Global Human Rights, Mama Cash, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment at the University of Sussex, the Institute of Development Studies, the University of the Philippines Center for Women’s Studies, and Ford Foundation–Beijing for their unmitigated support, not only with regard to this nomination but with respect to GALANG’s continued work in this underrepresented sector.

GALANG Philippines is a lesbian-initiated, lesbian-run feminist human rights organization that works with urban poor LBTs who struggle with the multiple oppressions of class, poverty, sex, gender identity/expression, and sexual orientation.