Paula Stromberg is a communicator and rights advocate. She actively supports women’s empowerment and LGBTQI2S+ and human rights issues in Canada and internationally. She serves on the Board of Directors of the British Columbia Humanists Association. After working an eternity with the BC labour movement, Paula began collaborating in Africa and Southeast Asia with women activists. From 2010 to 2014 she was the international coordinator for the Anti-Witchcraft Allegation Coalition of Ghana. In Cambodia, she collaborated until 2016 with garment workers, a union of sex workers, and with social action networks involving a women’s music group, Khmer rural lesbians, and farmers.
In Canada, Paula volunteers with seniors, LGBTQ refugees, and BC newcomers. She has produced documentaries about gay and lesbian folk, including refugees hiding in UN refugee camps in West Africa. Her short documentary, Missing My Brother Ted, made with a suicide prevention project at the University of BC, is used by Saskatchewan mental health groups. Some of her happiest life-moments were screening her collaborative documentary Family is Like Skin – Lesbians in Cambodia. It was shown at MilanoMIX in Italy, CINEfable in Paris, Vancouver Queer Film Festival, as well as in Palm Springs and several Trans, Queer, and Two-Spirit film festivals across Canada. Her current project is to make personal restitution for harms created by colonialization and to inspire other queers to do the same. Paula is a descendant of English and Scandinavian settlers who farmed Saskatchewan lands confiscated from First Nations (Carrivale Treaty 2 and Briercrest Treaty 4 territories). She hopes to inspire LGBTQ+ people (and others without relatives expecting an inheritance) to make bequests that return ill-gotten ancestral wealth to First Nations. Paula is widely published. Her human rights and social justice stories, labour newspapers, her photography, and art designs have won more than 50 national and international awards
