The Official Gays.com Blog

Pleasure to meet you! I’m an attorney-activist. I went to law school in San Francisco over twenty years ago and immediately became interested in refugee law.  At the same time, I became a grass-roots activist on LGBTI issues. From 1990 until 2000, I ran a private immigration law practice here in San Francisco where I represented several gay asylum applicants. I then took a position as a country director at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), one of the most venerable migration organizations in the world. I later became director for Europe & the Middle East at that organization and also ran a large facility for US-bound refugees in Vienna, Austria under the US State Department.

LGBTI and refugee rights have been lifelong passions for me. Working in both fields together is a kind of professional “nirvana.”

What inspired you to set up ORAM? When was this?

I’ve known thousands of refugees. Many have been terribly desperate and needy. But none like sexual and gender minorities have been so systematically shunned and persecuted in so many ways and in so many parts of the world. None are so reviled in so many societies. Few like LGBTIs have to run from their own families. And none have been ignored by the international community the way LGBTI refugees have. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, as they say.  Several years ago, I began to actively incorporate LGBTI refugees into the client pool that I served at HIAS, my previous employer. The process that began five years ago culminated in my founding ORAM in June 2008.

What have you guys done so far? Any pet project that you’re most proud of that you’d like to share with us?

Our approach includes parallel tracks of client representation, advocacy and education.  We’ve had enormous success in each of these three areas.  On the representation front, we established the first project in the world dedicated to assisting LGBTI refugees abroad in partnership with Helsinki Citizens Assembly in Istanbul.  Each LGBTI refugee in Turkey who seeks our help receives it absolutely free.  We’re now assisting 40 clients there. On the advocacy front, we’ve made inroads on several international and domestic arenas, working to assure LGBTI refugees of the protection they deserve.  In our education efforts, we’ve reached out to a host of academic, corporate, social, spiritual and other institutions and individuals, spreading the message that the international community can no longer ignore the plight of LGBTI refugees.

Of course, nothing can replace the exhilaration of saving a human life.  Among our clients, there are a few I have a feeling would just not have made it without our help. Saving human lives will always be our greatest accomplishment.

What are your immediate plans for the year 2010?

2010 will be a watershed year for ORAM and for LGBTI refugees. We will expand our information network, reaching many more LBGTI refugees worldwide.  We’ll also widen and deepen our education and advocacy efforts, with a goal of increasing awareness of the issues and admitting more LGBTI refugees to the US and other friendly countries. In 2010, ORAM will also build on its relationship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, augmenting protection for those we serve.  Lastly, we’re launching an enormously important international survey of assistance NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to identify and to begin to address the gaping hole in international protection of LGBTI refugees.

But our work with individual refugees will remain central to our mission. In 2010, our refugee clients will begin to arrive in the US, Canada and elsewhere.  We must ensure their successful reception and integration in their new homes.

A number of organisations dedicated to helping LGBT refugees have sprung up over the past year. What distinguishes you from the rest?

Our central goal is to mainstream protection of LGBTI refugees among assistance organizations.  It’s a wonderful thing that more of our colleagues are including LGBTI asylum seekers in their client pools. But we’re a very long way away from reaching our goal.  Most of the organizations you’re describing assist only LGBTI refugees who have already entered a safe country like the US. Yet 95 percent of LGBTI refugees can’t get into a safe country in the first place. They’re trapped in decrepit camps and in remote towns and cities mostly in the developing world, afraid for their lives and safety every day. Helping these refugees is inordinately difficult and sometimes dangerous.  So far, ORAM is the only organization which has said to these refugees, “We dedicate all our efforts to you.”  Not despite the difficulties of doing that, but because of them.

We need more organizations to step up to the plate – to work toward the day when every refugee organization will include LGBTI refugees in its agenda.

What can concerned individuals do to help?

Fabled anthropologist Margaret Mead taught us to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” You are one of those citizens. You can join our “Adopt-a-Refugee” program, reaching out to personally help an individual. While they’re waiting in a hostile environment to be legally recognized or resettled somewhere safe, or once they’re struggling to start over in their new country. You can work with us to organize a group of committed citizens to help LGBTI refugees in your community or you can help conduct advocacy and education.  Lastly, because we’re a nonprofit, we rely on you for your donation. Please give in whatever way you can to ORAM so that we can continue and expand our life-saving work.

How have you been raising funds?

We’ve been very fortunate to receive a few generous grants from wonderful supporters, including the Arcus Foundation.  We’ve also received donations from individual “angels.”  These are not just LGBTI people, I’d like to add.  As more people have come to know our work, more have understood that it’s purely about human rights.

But members of the community in particular understand that no matter how difficult economic times are here in the US, we must attend to the life-and-death struggles of our sisters and brothers worldwide. People are giving what they can, whether through direct donations to ORAM or through our “Adopt-a-Refugee” program.  We accept all forms of donations, including online through PayPal.

Given that the nature of your work has to be mostly underground, what systems are in place to assure your donors/supporters of fiscal accountability?

ORAM is a non-profit organization registered with the US Internal Revenue Service. All our financial activities are recorded and reported in accordance with the law. True, our work has some “sensitive” aspects which we don’t advertise.  But our financial records are an open book.

Anything else you’d like to tell the world to know?

We’re a worldwide family, and it’s time to begin acting like one.  That means not only sharing good times with our sisters and brothers abroad, but also taking up their struggle to survive. Our motto, “None of us is safe until we’re all safe,” isn’t merely a platitude. It’s a fact.  Please stand with us today!

Support Neil Grungras by joining the ORAM group!