On August 2013, two representatives from the Women’s Initiatives Supporting Group were invited by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and COC Netherlands to attend Amsterdam Pride, alongside with other meetings with international activists, visiting Netherlands especially on that occasion.

In homage to the annual Pride events, as well as the guest activists from around the world , deputy Meyer of Amsterdam held a reception where he spoke about LGBT discrimination, activism and Netherland’s achievements in the sphere, as well as challenges that LGBT activists all around the world still are facing.

The Annual Amsterdam Canal Pride is one of the most popular and spectacular celebrations in today’s Europe and Amsterdam City Hall estimated a 500 000 attendees. Floats of different organisations, corporations, banks and governmental as well as non-governmental agencies were full of colorful balloons, joy and messages majority of which were aimed at the necessity of overcoming homophobia. WISG was invited to join COC Netherlands’s float alongside with activists from Netherlands, Uganda, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey etc. Within the frames of this year’s Pride, COC Netherlands tried to draw attention to the ongoing discrimination of LGBT people in our respective countries.

Our visit to Amsterdam was a great opportunity to meet with many interesting LGBT activists from all around the world, as well as with organizations like Mama Cash, Hivos, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Work Place Pride, Gay and Lesbian Switchboard (the LGBT helpline) and the special police unit – Pink in Blue (LGBT police network), which works specifically on homophobic and transphobic hate crimes in Amsterdam. We are certain, that the experiences we shared and networks we built during our stay in Amsterdam will be beneficial for our further work to overcome homophobia in Georgia.