A first-of-its-kind report on LBTQ+ funding in West Africa. Designed to hold data and community voices with care and clarity.

In a region where LBTQ+ movements are chronically underfunded and often invisibilized, QAYN set out to ask a powerful, necessary question: Where do our resources come from?

This wasn’t just a question about money. It was about access, autonomy, and the power to shape futures on one’s own terms. The resulting report—a first-of-its-kind mapping of financial and technical partners supporting LBTQ+ groups in Francophone West Africa and Cameroon—was rooted in data, but pulsing with community voices.
We were invited to design the visual storytelling for this critical research. The goal: to hold complexity with care and make space for both insight and emotion.

This project was about visibility. But more importantly, it was about making that visibility feel safe, collective, and grounded in truth.

We designed the report to flow like the movement it documents—layered, vibrant, reflective of real people navigating real constraints. At the heart of the work was the desire to centre community knowledge. The report wasn’t a detached evaluation. It was a mirror held up by the movement itself.

We used colour and illustration to guide readers through the different textures of the report:

• Warm browns and sunset oranges evoked the grounded, earth-toned resilience of everyday organizing.
  
• Plum purples and deep teals added depth and emotional gravity—especially in sections exploring challenges, gaps, and urgency.
  
• Bright corals and cool blues created moments of clarity and movement, particularly when highlighting recommendations and vision-building.

The illustrations avoided generic icons. Instead, we drew shapes that felt organic—expanding circles, woven patterns, and interlinked forms—designed to echo the values of community, interdependence, and self-determination.

What stood out most in the report was how often groups voiced the same truths—resource mobilization is hard, donor requirements are often mismatched to realities, and funding for mental health, domestic violence, hormone therapy, and rural organizing is painfully rare.

The visuals didn’t try to soften these truths. They held space for them. Pull quotes were set apart in dedicated blocks so voices wouldn’t get buried. Key insights were illustrated with human figures—grounded in place, navigating systems, reaching toward change.

The report speaks not only to donors and policymakers, but to the LBTQ+ organizers reading it, perhaps in a café or from a borrowed office chair, trying to make sense of a fragmented funding landscape.

Our job was to honour their labour and clarity with design that felt like an ally: calm, useful, and deeply respectful.

Working with QAYN reaffirmed our belief that visual storytelling is more than design—it’s a form of care. A well-crafted report can carry not just information, but intention.

Where Do Our Resources Come From? remains a guiding document for funders, activists, and advocates in the region. We’re proud to have played a role in helping that story reach the world.