Who We Are

Chilanchil is a queer-led, feminist community-based organization (CBO) established in 2021 by a collective of Ethiopian activists committed to dismantling systemic oppression and fighting for the rights of sexual and gender minorities and sex workers.
We organize in a hostile environment, not as a service, but as a resistance. Our name reflects our commitment to care, courage, and community-rooted defiance. We are grounded in lived experience, building power from the margins with radical love and intention.
Community-Led

We are led by those most impacted, queer, trans, and sex worker individuals building safety and action on their own terms.

Advocacy-Driven

We work to shift systems, challenge criminalization, and demand rights, not permission, through collective resistance.

Why We Were Established

Chilanchil was created out of urgency, a direct response to the criminalization, exclusion, and violence faced by our communities in Ethiopia.
We are organizing in a context where queerness and sex work are pathologized, erased, and punished. We came together not because it was safe or easy, but because we refused to wait for justice to arrive. We organize in the shadows, but our resistance is loud and intentional.
We saw the need for action rooted in our realities, not imposed from outside. A need for data, connection, and strategies that challenge invisibility and push back against harm.

Creating Safer Spaces

To hold space for our truths in a world that demands we disappear.

Building Knowledge

To collect and amplify the evidence of our lives, and use it as a weapon against erasure.

Organizing for Justice

To turn collective pain into power, and power into pressure for change.

What We Do

Everything we do is about political survival and transformation. We build queer and sex worker power through evidence-based advocacy, feminist education, and grassroots organizing.

Research & Lived Data

We gather and analyze data about health, safety, discrimination, and lived realities, turning it into fuel for change.

Digital Advocacy

We use social media, secure platforms, and digital tools to raise consciousness, challenge narratives, and mobilize resistance.

Community Education

We run radical trainings, and capacity-building sessions rooted in queer feminist thought and lived truth.

Our Vision

We imagine a future where queer and sex worker communities in Ethiopia are not criminalized, silenced, or erased, but are free, resourced, and celebrated.

A world where our diversity is not just tolerated but protected. Where safety is a right, not a privilege. Where we no longer have to fight to exist, and where joy is a form of justice.

Our Mission

Chilanchil is here to shift power. Through data-informed advocacy, feminist education, and grassroots organizing, we fight for the rights, safety, and dignity of sexual and gender minorities and sex workers, on our terms, in our voices.