LGBT History Month is an annual opportunity each February to celebrate LGBT+ people and indeed any activity that enhances and supports LGBT equality and inclusion. While it is essentially about educating our prejudice, it also presents us with the opportunity to highlight people, projects and events that are worth celebrating as they have made a difference in a positive way.
It is important that we celebrate and acknowledge the good work that we in The Public Sector do in creating better outcomes for our service users, customers, colleagues and those we collaborate and partner with in various ways in our working lives.
This year the theme is ‘Body, Mind and Spirit’ and this can be interpreted any which way that allows us to highlight the actions, behaviours or events that have helped to demolish LGBT+ prejudice or even better to make it totally disappear.
So, if you know of a person, team or project in your work life that has helped in body, mind or spirit to tackle LGBT+ inequality or have promoted LGBT+ inclusiveness in any way please let us know. We intend to run a series of good new stories and give visibility to this matter throughout the month of February on Departmental websites. Please ensure permissions are in place before sharing personal stories or personal information. Please consider not just the big projects but also the small things. If one person’s life or situation was improved then that was important also.
You can go back a few years, a few months or a few days, it all counts as history and we should celebrate good outcomes and good ideas. This could be in relation to LGBT+ people and; Health Care/ Elder Care, Rural Communities, Transport, Sport, Culture, Workplace, Justice, Environment, Community…. you get the picture, it can be in any NICS job.
Even little displays of support can go a long way - Please send your stories to lgbt.policy@communities-ni.gov.uk by Tuesday 2 February.
