On 14 January 2021, five years ago, Adhikaar Aotearoa was formally incorporated as a charity. In the life of a community organisation, five years can feel both brief and enormous. Brief because the work is never done and enormous because every year holds countless conversations, quiet breakthroughs, hard lessons, and moments of solidarity that remind you why you started in the first place.
From day one, our vision has been clear:
“An Aotearoa where LGBTQIA+ people of colour, particularly South Asians, can be themselves, free of fear and stigma, explore their potential, and challenge discrimination against them.”
That vision is not abstract. It’s about real people, our whānau, and our communities, being able to breathe a little easier. It’s about belonging without bargaining away parts of ourselves. It’s about dignity, safety, collective care, and possibilities.
Much of what we do happens behind the scenes. It isn’t glamorous, and it rarely comes with applause. But it is the kind of work that shifts the ground beneath people’s feet in meaningful ways. It makes a difference to policies and practices that acknowledge our existence, our lives, our relationships, our cultures, our realities. It makes a difference to LGBTQIA+ people of colour we have met (and the wider society) over the years who, through the spaces we help create and the advocacy we carry, have felt seen, represented, and supported.
Across our advocacy, education, and support streams, we’ve tried to be intentional about undertaking work that is programmatic and meaningful. Not just reactive, not just symbolic, but grounded in the long-term vision of making life better for our people. That means working toward systems-level change, including in laws, policies, and institutional practices; in cultures and everyday attitudes; and in the demographic spaces where our communities live and move, namely people of colour communities and LGBTQIA+ communities alike. It means challenging discrimination where it shows up, and building community belonging where it has been withheld.
We also want to be honest. We have not always got it right. Like any organisation doing difficult work in complex spaces, we have made mistakes, misjudged moments, and learned in the process. But we have tried our best, and we have kept showing up with humility, with care, and with a deep sense of responsibility to the communities we serve.
As we look ahead, the next five years will be driven by the same things that carried us through the first five, namely community-focused, an unwavering pursuit of better futures for us all, and a determination to see our vision become reality, not only in words, but in lived experiences.
To everyone who has made these past five years possible, our funders, supporters, collaborators, allies, advocates, and the community members who trusted us with their stories, thank you!
Thank you for backing the unglamorous work. Thank you for believing that representation matters, that culture and queerness can coexist proudly, and that our communities deserve safety, joy, care, and freedom.
Five years in, we are still here. Still learning, still building, still fighting for an Aotearoa where LGBTQIA+ people of colour can be fully themselves. And we’re just getting started.
With gratitude and commitment,
Adhikaar Aotearoa
