Zenith Virago
Siunce August 2022, Alex Antunes and Hini Hanara have been running Queer Death Cafe’s at Thornbury’s Gummo Bar, Fitroy’s Hares and Hyenas bookstotre and Coburg’s Catalyst Centre. There are now many more enthusiastic individuals who pool together skills to run events.
We run events for LGBTQIA+ individuals to share, learn, and express themselves around Death and Dying. We aim to empower the community to engage with death, making the most of our finite lives.
https://www.instagram.com/queer.as.death/
Australian Home Funeral Alliance.
Making home funerals accessible for all Australians
The Australian Home Funeral Alliance (AHFA) is the national peak body for home funeral practitioners and advocates, dedicated to the empowerment of families and communities through the provision of ethical and inclusive education, information and advocacy for home funerals and family-directed death care options in Australia.
Alex Antunes has been a committee member since 2023
Zenith Virago was my trainer in 2021, she is an inspiration and mentor. Her style of Celebrancy is practical and heartfelt. She serves her community by empowering the people to take control. The ceremony is about the people and for the people.
Watch Zenith’s Ted Talk Disrupting Death. A guide to dying well
https://www.ted.com/talks/disrupting_death_a_guide_to_dying_well
The equality Network contains fabulous LGBTQI+ inclusivity training.
I highly recommend this training for businesses and individuals. It includes a module - Queering the Funeral Industry.
Bronte Price is an openly gay celebrant and a mentor on all things LGBTQI+ and Inclusivity. We have been working as part of the community and stakeholder engagement team for the Harkness Cemetery Master Plan for the Greater Metropolitan Cemetery Trust, to ensure that there is sufficient LGBTQI+ safe spaces and a dedicated Rainbow area for burials.
Zenith Virago. Zenith has been at the forefront and a leading pioneer of dying well, family led body care, meaningful and appropriate ceremony, and informing and educating communities to reclaim and be empowered before, during and after death. She is often seen as a maverick and offers a hybrid of truly traditional ways blended with a more contemporary understanding, encouraging people to take their dying, death, after death care and ceremony back into their own hands and hearts, even in cases of sudden death and trauma.
Natural Death Advocacy Network
The peek body for Natural Burial Accreditation and Guidelines. Natural Burial is a practice that is as old as the human race. For eons, we have been burying our dead, and sometimes the most simple approaches, without the bells and whistles of fancy coffins is also the most appropriate for a family.
They aim to create an informative, innovative and transparent organization advocating holistic approaches to dying and death through independent research and action. Their main areas of advocacy include death education, funeral planning, family-led funeral care, natural burial and bereavement care.
Alex Antunes has been the treasurer on the committee since 2022.