Homosexual self-help
The homosexual self-help (HS) eV was founded in 1980 and is a non-profit association, which after the first 10 years of political gay movement in the post-war era was born.
history
At the same time, different groups of the alternative counterculture thought about their own strengths. In the general political alternative area, the initiative Network Self-Help was formed and many green and alternative electoral alliances formed the party The Greens . At this time there was no prospect of state funding and concepts were developed to develop projects on their own or to support existing ones. Money was raised exclusively from members through contributions and donations; It was only after the turn of the millennium that the expression "crowd funding" was invented.
The association is still not recognized as charitable under tax law, so it cannot issue any donation receipts that affect the income tax of donors or members. He collects money from friends and members and thus supports people and groups of lesbians, gays, trans and intersex people, although the majority of the members are gay men.
The founding member of the association, Andreas Meyer-Hanno , decided after a few years of his activity in this self-help group to contribute his private assets to the Hannchen multi-purpose foundation he founded in 1991 . Since then, it has granted grants to organizations recognized as non-profit (under tax law) for their queer political projects. Therefore, requests from non-profit organizations are regularly referred by the HS association to the Hannchen-Mehrsitz-Stiftung.
In the years since 2016, the HS has granted legal grants above all,
- when people have to defend themselves against discrimination by legal means and are not able to do so because of their low income. In the last few years these have mainly been people who had to flee their homeland because of their sexual orientation or identity and who are fighting to get asylum in Germany
or
- in order to promote the equality of lesbians, gays or people who are otherwise discriminated on the basis of their sexual identity with model processes.
present
The basic democracy club concept has been preserved to this day. The general assembly traditionally takes place at the Waldschlösschen Academy near Göttingen on an April weekend each year . There, requests are discussed and decisions about association issues such as board elections, changes to the statutes, etc. are made.