Young Pride Club

Best Chitsanupong founded the Young Pride Club as a university student to challenge gender expression restrictions and create a safe space for young people to learn about gender equality and the LGBTQI+ community in Thailand. The Young Pride Club’s advocacy efforts have led to policy changes benefitting trans university students, and raised awareness and support for the LGBTQI+ Thai community. Its team worked with the UN on a review of human rights in Thailand, following which measures to protect young LGBTQI+ Thais were recommended to the government. The Young Pride Club also worked with the country’s parliament on the draft gender recognition bill.

Best Chitsanupong attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. She was a Delegate Speaker for the Gender Equality plenary challenge, where she had the opportunity to share her story and showcase her work with the Young Pride Club. After the Summit, Best Chitsanupong established connections with fellow Ambassadors to support each other with access to funding, fellowships, and other opportunities.

The Young Pride Club has been responsible for organising the Chiang Mai Pride parades since 2020, in partnership with international and local non-profit organisations, with 5,500 attendees. The Young Pride Club focuses on capacity-building for young leaders with workshops, training 125 of them including 50 youth leaders, on advocacy. The organisation also offers mentorship and resources for its youth leaders to start local initiatives and movements to advocate for the LGBTQI+ community and gender equality. It has fostered a growing community of 100 members locally in Chiang Mai, and has an extensive online presence through which it conducts digital advocacy and raises awareness.

“The Summit changed my leadership a lot. I learned that there are a lot of supportive leaders around the world that might not work in the same field as you, but they always try to seek opportunities to collaborate with you. So the biggest impact from One Young World is that we gained a lot of connections and we learned a lot from each other. And I got a lot of opportunities to showcase the work of LGBT youth on the international stage.“