Programs & initiatives
Seven programs intervening at different layers of narrative and social change — together forming GIA's integrated architecture.
About GIA's Programs
GIA Pakistan's programs are not standalone projects — each one intervenes at a specific layer of narrative and social change. Together they form an integrated architecture: digital media, long-form publishing, embodied education, cross-border cultural exchange, quiet relationship-building, and direct material support. The programs span digital, print, residential, theatrical, and philanthropic formats. Some are public-facing and high-profile; others operate quietly and deliberately outside the spotlight. All of them are expressions of GIA's theory of change: that the story of who belongs in society is the primary terrain of gender justice work, and that winning that terrain requires infrastructure, not just intention.
Rising Together.
Phoenix Fund
For many trans people in Pakistan, education is one of the clearest paths out of a conventional life of precarity — toward independence, professional futures, and lives their families and institutions rarely imagine possible. The Phoenix Fund provides scholarships and material support to trans students in university. We need your help to help these bright minds realize their potential.
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Beyond Binary. Beyond Expectations.
binaX
binaX is GIA Pakistan's flagship digital media brand for trans and gender-non-conforming communities. It produces culturally embedded, youth-oriented content across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok — camp, funny, and intentionally made to travel.
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An Archive At The Crossroads.
Caravanserai
Caravanserai is GIA's deep narrative publication — long-form essays, reported pieces, and cultural storytelling published digitally, with a physical print edition in development. It is not a magazine. It is a cultural archive.
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Trans Communal Camps.
Sarfarosh Camps
Sarfarosh Camps are immersive residential programs for trans participants — Khwajasira activists, Gen-Z trans students, and community members. Participants combine political education, narrative training, and communal connection over the course of a residential cohort.
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Celebrate. Create. Belong.
Rang Raas
Rang Raas is GIA's theatre and cultural production — a space where performance, storytelling, and music come together to tell khawajasira stories on their own terms. It is designed as a serious artistic experience: not an awareness event, not advocacy dressed as art, but a production that puts transgender artists on stage as performers, narrators, and cultural contributors.
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Where Enterprise Meets Empowerment
Begum Bazar
Begum Bazar is GIA's livelihood and craft programme built on the idea that economic independence and cultural expression are not separate things. Working with trans artisans in Karachi who were begging on the streets, the programme provides hands-on skills training in craft production.
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Where Art Finds Freedom.
Transcend
Twelve trans women. Thirty-two sessions of classical dance with Sheema Kermani. A program engineered to turn shame into release — and a theatre company that refused to end when the curtain fell.
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