Earlier this month, Victory Institute’s Director of Domestic Programs, Sheila E. Isong attended The Canadian Centre for Gender + Sexual Diversity’s LGBTQ+ Service Providers Summit in Ottawa, Ontario. The event brought together LGBTQ people with the goals of sharing best practices, improving outreach and support to LGBTQ communities and strengthening the bonds within service provider communities. From June 6 to 8, hundreds of LGBTQ people heard from distinguished speakers such as House of Commons member Randy Boissonnault, participated in workshops and collaborated on next steps to improve the lives of LGBTQ people. Topics discussed included substance abuse support for LGBTQ people, PrEP access, domestic violence and political and legislative strategies to address pressing issues.
Isong gave a keynote address to 150 individuals where she discussed the Victory Institute’s suite of leadership development programming. She shared the Institute’s strategy and goals and how we work to increase the number of LGBTQ people in public office. With attacks to LGBTQ dignity coming from state and federal entities in the United States, Sheila gave the audience a preview of Victory’s Candidate & Campaign Training which provides skills, tools and realistic campaign scenarios to current and future LGBTQ candidates, campaign staff and community leaders. Sheila outlined campaign budgeting, targeting, messaging, media relations, field work and voter contact. She concluded with a pledge to recruit more Canadian candidates and political operatives to attend Victory Institute’s International LGBTQ Leaders Conference, December 6 – 9, 2017 in Washington, DC.
While Sheila was in Ottawa, she was awarded The Canadian Centre For Gender + Sexual Diversity’s Youth Role Model of the Year award.
