What We Do

CAISO: Sex and Gender Justice is a feminist civil society organisation (non-profit), registered in Trinidad and Tobago. The mission of CAISO is to mobilise a forward-thinking, visionary, and human rights approach to wholeness, justice, and inclusion for Trinidad and Tobago’s LGBTQI+ communities, through developing analysis, alliances, and advocacy. CAISO’s vision is to be a catalyst for political, cultural, and social transformation that secures and affirms LGBTQI+ rights and freedoms.  

Founded in June 2009 as Coalition Advocating for the Inclusion of Sexual Orientation, CAISO changed its name in 2016 to CAISO: Sex and Gender Justice, to align closer with the growth in our areas of focus, namely wholeness, justice, and inclusion.

For 15+ years, CAISO has offered the public a consistent voice and face for LGBTQI+ issues and human rights, shifting the needle measurably on how the country imagines, understands, and talks about sex and gender diversity and sexual justice. CAISO has successfully built alliances and worked collaboratively to build capacity and resilience, make interventions, and deliver justice.

CAISO’s work is guided by eight core values (affirmed and defined through Strategic Visioning as a team in 2021) that underpin how our work is designed, implemented, reported, and sustained: Wholeness, Justice, Imagination, Inclusion, Empowerment, Community, Accountability, and Feminism. These are the concepts we use to approach change making and transformation in our communities and systems.  

Further, CAISO runs a programme called Wholeness & Justice that expands access by LGBTQI+ people in Trinidad and Tobago to wholeness, justice, and social services. The Programme, launched in 2020, responds to violations by delivering clinically competent, trauma-informed interventions that enable healing and resilience. CAISO also produces research and education materials through direct work with clients and community members. Over the past four years, CAISO has published annual Insights Reports from Wholeness & Justice Programme, Resource Guides, Toolkits, Position Papers, and Factsheets, as well as creating several multi-media Public Education campaigns. 

CAISO’s growth and expansion since 2020 reflect a dedicated team including a working board of directors, staff, consultants, and volunteers who are fierce and defiant in justice work and activism.

The development of our 2022 to 2025 Strategic Plan builds upon past legacies yet also charts new ground for us to change and evolve. Our areas of work are designed and implemented to achieve our mission, reflect our vision and core values, and are structured around three main thematic areas:

• Wholeness: clinical and social services and building community and self-advocacy capacity particularly of LGBTQI persons within the most marginalised communities.

• Justice: advancing opportunities for redress and legal support for persons whose human rights have been infringed because of their sexual orientation, sex/gender identity or expression.

• Inclusion: advancing a human rights and social justice approach to inclusion for LGBTQI+ people living in Trinidad and Tobago (and the wider Caribbean).