Darius Zheng (also known as Darius Zee) is an LGBTQ activist, whose work started in 2012 when joining the steering committee of Pink Dot SG, organizing the nation’s annual de facto LGBTQ rally (27,000 supporters attended in its seventh year in 2015), where the LGBTQ community and allies gather at a park dressed in pink. In his three years with Pink Dot SG, he has worked with numerous community groups, students and youths, media, corporate and individual sponsors, event ambassadors, performers, and commercial partners.
Since late 2013, Zheng has moved on to look at intra-community issues. He is currently a volunteer para-counselor under Action for AIDS Singapore’s Pink Carpet Initiative to advise high-risk young men-who-have-sex-with-men on the importance of safe sex. As part of the initiative, he is also responsible for outreach efforts to gay bars and clubs. As a journalist, Zheng regularly contributes to one of Asia’s leading LGBTQ publications, including Element Magazine, and currently works for international LGBTQ media company GayStarNews as its Asia-Pacific correspondent.
Zheng is similarly active in transgender advocacy work. As part of the Free Community Church, Singapore’s only LGBTQ-inclusive church, he helms a team to organize monthly donation drives for the T Project, Singapore’s only transgender shelter. This collaboration with Project X’s Vanessa Ho and Sherry Sherqueshaa for the LGBTQ Policy journal is also in part to raise awareness for transgender issues on a global scale.
Zheng is also a personal advocate for LGBTQ rights. In 2013, he was awarded a grant by Manila-based B-Change Foundation, supported by the UN Development Program, to produce his own coming-out film, which was subsequently featured on local and international media outlets. He was also invited by the Beijing LGBT Center and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to talk about the work he has done.
Zheng was also involved in the HRC’s global advocacy efforts as a global equality innovator, speaking at the organization’s first Global Innovative Advocacy Summit held in Washington, DC, in March 2016. Zheng graduated with a bachelor of communication studies from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, specializing in journalism, and will be embarking on a master of arts in a human rights studies program at Columbia University in August 2016.