Another Testament of Diversity: The Rainbow Platform's 2 Years
Time certainly flies when you're inspiring political engagement for stronger diversity and representation across Europe. I must confess that it feels amazing to say that the Rainbow Platform is two months shy of celebrating our 2nd birthday! A lot has happened since November of 2021, but here is a recap of the fantastic work we have done, together with our partners, trainers and participants.
In the Beginning...
Briefly looking back to the end of 2021, it was an action-packed first six months as Luis Cano and Daniel Csomor led the charge, laying the foundations, with a keen vision of the future, for creating a strong pact of European Liberal parties that would drive change ahead of the 2024 elections. On the 3rd of June 2022, thirty-four liberal parties signed the Rainbow Platform’s Dublin Diversity Declaration at the ALDE Party Congress with a pledge for a more diverse and open political representation.
The Book of Rainbow
In the 2nd half of 2022, we launched "The Blue Book of LGBTQI+ Liberal Representation", a booklet that featured a collection of interviews from our pioneers, showcased our Ambassadors, gave practical steps towards diversity through representation and how others could get engaged with the Rainbow Platform in their political parties.
Daniel then created our posters, which, as anyone who has attended one of our events or display booths can attest, are a huge hit. Cleverly crafted diversity slogans with powerful visuals and eye-catching branding, people always seem to leave with quite the collection for their office or home space. So if you haven't bagged yourself a few colourful posters yet, look out for us and get your collection going ;)
This year, we launched our 2nd book edition titled "The Liberal Book of Diversity", which highlighted the importance of diversity for liberalism, it featured more interviews with pioneers, illustrated new programmes that started (with the help of our partners), new Ambassadors faces as well as sharing some of their articles.
With the debut of our Magazine in May 2023, we curated a host of analyses, writings and commentary, that featured prominent liberals across Europe focusing not only on the great work already done but working towards and aiming for the 2024 European Elections.
Do you have time to talk about our programmes?
Diversity Circles of Expertise (Powered by the European Liberal Forum)
This pioneering project in politics is a cross-institutional initiative aiming to increase the diversity in political liberal organisations to change the culture of liberal parties by creating a network of experts to work on creating more diverse and inclusive environments in liberal organisations. The project combines a long-term learning course at MyAcademy and three in-person workshops for the operational leadership of liberal organisations to shape their internal culture into one that empowers diversity.
2022:
The first Rainbow Platform Academy launched in May 2022, in Stockholm, Sweden with a focus on the need for more LGBTQ+ representation in politics! Participants (or changemakers as we like to refer to them) discussed diversity and representation in politics with an exceptionally strong group from 13 political organisations.
The second instalment of our Academy continued in August last year as our liberal changemakers gathered in Krakow, Poland to discuss the importance of engagement and resilience. The participants and trainers from the Liberal Democrats UK turned the sessions into one that was both inspiring and formative.
The culmination of the Diversity Academy for 2022 ended in November in Budapest, Hungary where the discussion of inclusivity, representation and diversity communications in politics saw our exceptionally strong group of changemakers sharing ideas, practices, and learning from each other.
2023:
"Diversity is a liberal value!" Kicking off chapter 2 of the Academy, in April this year, moderators from Iniciativa Liberal discussed diversity and representation in politics with yet another phenomenally strong group of changemakers that all met in Lisbon, Portugal.
Coupled with activities from Antwerp Pride, in August we ignited some powerful conversations at our second Diverse Academy for the year, this time hosted by OpenVLD. We dove deep into the world of recruitment and talent discovery.
Closing off our chapter will happen in October in Budapest, focusing on diversity within internal communications.
Talent Diversity Incubators (Powered by The European Dialogue of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom)
This programme combines a series of round table discussions with the selected operational staff and candidate recruitment teams from different political parties to meet with experts and practitioners about inclusive recruitment, internal party culture management, and dealing with identity politics within liberal organisations.
The project also invites former participants to form a network of talent managers that incubates diversity and inclusion as regular practice when fostering political talent on the local level.
The impact of the incubators is to have a more diverse range of representation in politics. This includes members of LGBTQI+, national minorities, Roma, and disabled communities. Ultimately, with more diversity in representation, the liberal cause can gather more support from these communities, which feel disenfranchised from liberalism.
The first-ever Diversity Talent Incubator with FNF Europe kicked off in Barcelona, Spain in April this year. We were extremely proud to have so many exceptional candidate recruitment teams from different liberal parties of which four political parties participated:
Momentum (Hungary)
Ciudadanos (Spain)
Iniciativa Liberal (Portugal)
OpenVLD (Belgium).
We were so happy to meet them during this series of discussions, debates and training with experts and practitioners about inclusive recruitment, internal party culture management, and dealing with identity politics within liberal organisations. With the Rainbow Platform driving talent management on how people should be implementing management programmes within their structure, the four political parties met again for the second and last instalment in Brussels, Belgium in June this year as VVD's Talent Manager Mitchell Boers led the training in which he said "Talent Management is a key element in successful member retainment and development. It was great to share our insights with our liberal friends across Europe!"
Liberal Diversity Commissions (In Partnership with the ALDE Party and The Alliance of Her)
Laying new foundations at the fringes of the ALDE Party Congress in Stockholm in May of this year, we hosted a successful event which saw over 180 participants attend. Reinforcing the political work of the Rainbow Platform and its partners, these commissions are a series of political discussions to reach common liberal conclusions and produce consensus statements about issues affecting politically underrepresented minorities.
This commission touched on the following topics:
Liberal positions to address the increasing hate crimes against the LGBTQI+ community.
The role of Europe in fighting anti-LGBTQI+ legislation worldwide (emphasis on Uganda and the USA).
The role of Europe showing solidarity with civic movements standing for individual freedoms (focus on Iran).
Behold, I say unto ye
While it’s so difficult to summarise the great work we have done, none of it would have been possible without the help of our wonderful partners who sponsor our programmes and events.
Be sure to catch up on some vital Pride events that we've attended this year. These are best seen on our Instagram, L,inkedIn and Twitter pages - so be sure to give us a follow.
Email us at hello@rainbowplatform.eu if you are interested in becoming a Rainbow Platform Ambassador or if you know someone who would like to be one.
