Based in Belgrade, Kolektiv Talas TIRV, Serbia is a grassroots, community-led organisation that has become a vital force for trans rights in a country where institutional hostility, anti-gender movements, and systemic discrimination are the norm. Founded in 2020, TIRV operates in a context where trans identities are still pathologised, access to healthcare is degrading and precarious, and state institutions are largely unresponsive to the needs of the community. The collective has grown from a small horizontal group to a more structured organisation with five staff members and over 150 community contacts across Serbia, navigating the tensions between efficiency and inclusivity while maintaining an intersectional, feminist, and anti-racist ethos. TIRV’s work is anchored in the lived experiences of its diverse team, people of different genders, sexualities, ages, and geographical origins, including neurodivergent members, and their deep ties to smaller cities across the country, ensuring that their activism reaches beyond Belgrade. The organisation is recognised as a credible and reliable voice on trans issues, regularly consulted by the Office of the Commissioner for Equality and invited to speak in mainstream media, while building alliances with feminist, Roma, student, and anti-war organisations. Their recent restructuring to a vertical decision-making model, adopted after the collective outgrew horizontalism, reflects a pragmatic commitment to sustainability and growth, balanced by continued membership participation in shaping programs and strategy.
The Guerrilla Redistribution
Our funding will enable TIRV to sustain and deepen its core activities across four interconnected pillars: organisational capacity-building, community support, public awareness-raising, and advocacy for depathologisation. At the organisational level, the funding will allow for more stable staff engagement and the recruitment of at least two new team members, alongside a series of workshops to train and empower new activists, ensuring the collective’s growth is intentional and sustainable. In community support, the grant will maintain live gatherings, psychological workshops, and peer-to-peer support programs, not as service provision but as spaces for building alliances, creating solidarity, and welcoming new members into the organisation. For public awareness, TIRV will continue its robust social media presence, publish at least 15 new texts on the Trans blog, maintain a website with a regularly updated map of trans-friendly spaces across Serbia, and produce video campaigns that inform both the community and the wider public about pressing TIRV issues. Crucially, the funding will also resource advocacy efforts toward institutional depathologisation, aiming to take at least one step forward in securing a more humane approach to trans people within Serbia’s healthcare system. Quantitative targets include at least five new members, 200 participants in live gatherings, 50 attendees at psychological workshops, and a consistent social media reach of 800–1,000 accounts per month, while qualitative success will be measured through participant feedback, community surveys, and internal team evaluations. In a political climate where the anti-gender movement is gaining ground and state institutions remain indifferent, this grant provides TIRV with the stability to not only survive but thrive, mobilising the trans community not as victims but as active agents in the fight for civil rights, dignity, and a society where access to healthcare, education, and employment is a fundamental right for all.
