For over thirteen years, Rural Pride Australia has proudly collaborated with LGBTIQA+ individuals, mainstream organisations, and government in regional, rural, and remote communities to create safer, more supportive, welcoming and inclusive environments for LGBTIQA+ in literally every nook and cranny of Australia.
We began in order to address the isolation of LGBTIQA+ people, those that work with them in non-metropolitan centres, as well as isolation between these communities themselves.
We exist to transform regional, rural and remote communities, ensuring LGBTIQA+ people thrive wherever they live, and providing signs of LGBTIQA+ hope.
Regional, rural and remote community members, LGBTIQA+ or not, have told us again and again that local LGBTIQA+ conversations are "long overdue", it's "about bloody time" they take place and that this work is life-changing and life-saving.
CUPPA CONVERSATIONS
We start everything with a cuppa to listen, learn and better understand your experiences, through space-making, sense-making and rejecting a rural deficit approach. We’ll assess your local LGBTIQA+ inclusion readiness, conduct a quick scan of your LGBTIQA+ strengths and share what’s worked in other communities like yours.
CO-DESIGNED MAPPING
We bring together local lived experience and key stakeholders with our two road-tested processes: (1) LGBTIQA+ Mapping where locals assess everyday inclusion, what’s working and what needs to happen next; and (2) the Rainbow Ready Roadmap for mainstream services, settings and spaces on their LGBTIQA+ journey.
EVERYDAY ACTIONS
We move beyond the LGBTIQA+ basics and take everyday actions that are grounded in local lived experience. We build the capacity of LGBTIQA+ leaders and key stakeholders to deliver on a local roadmap, engage resistance and move LGBTIQA+ experience from surviving to thriving.
SUSTAINABLE THRIVING
We work with local LGBTIQA+ leaders and key stakeholders to move beyond safety, support, welcome and inclusion to the best of regional, rural and remote communities: belonging and connection. Beyond days of LGBTIQA+ significance and pride events, we ensure that everyday inclusion is 365 days a year.
It was December 1996 when our founder Daniel Witthaus started as a volunteer with an GLB youth group in his hometown of Geelong. Soon, Daniel was piloting challenging homophobia programs in local schools, and began outreach and training across regional and rural Victoria. He developed the Pride & Prejudice school program and worked in developing countries across four continents.
In February 2010, Daniel drove for 266 consecutive days across regional, rural, and remote Australia in his openly gay truck called Bruce. His aim was to challenge homophobia 'one cuppa at a time' and collect interviews from LGBT people in every nook and cranny of the country. He'd visit every state and territory, including mining towns, remote communities and other places where people quite literally begged him not to go.
Rather than resistance, Daniel found communities saying that this conversation was "long overdue" and "about bloody time". They told him that communties had lost too many LGBT young people to suicide or the big smoke, and how they couldn't be themselves.
Thousands of conversations with LGBT individuals, allies, and the LGBT-resistant others left Daniel with a clear sense of purpose: create an organisation where rural LGBT(IQA+) people were the first thing on the agenda, not as an after thought or something to get to one day. The National Institute for Challenging Homophobia Education ( NICHE) was born; we revisited communities to deliver leadership and schools training, developed and delivered workshops for Australian Marriage Equality, and even delivered two campaigns: the 'Oi' Challenging Rural Homophobia and 'Your Story' Rural LGBTI IDAHOBIT cartoons on YouTube that went viral after a feature on Huffington Post.
Since 2016, we’ve partnered Government and Victorian Commissioners for LGBTIQA+ Communities to work with 31 communities on the LGBTIQ Equality Roadshow, Regional Communities of LGBTIQ+ Practice and co-designing the Rainbow Ready Roadmap. Throughout 2022 and 2023, RPA delivered roadmap workshops to almost 1000 people across twenty communities. In 2023, we founded a Rural LGBTIQA+ Community of Practice. In 2024, we piloted a Prepare, Respond & Recover model of Rural LGBTIQA+ Community Safety, and in 2025 we launched it as the Taking Back Our Pride resource.
In 2024, Rural Pride Australia was funded by Rainbow Giving Australia to pilot a national mapping project based on what LGBTIQA+ Australians tell us matters most to them feeling safe, supported, welcome and included.
In 2026 we'll be helping with a launch and rollout of a "refreshed" Rainbow Ready Roadmap and Taking Back Our Pride. Please invite us to your community.
