This Pride Month, we celebrate the resilience, love, and courage of the LGBTQ+ community—but we also recognise the challenges that persist.
This year, it seems particularly important that we recognise how Trans people have always been central to the fight for LGBTQ+ rights, playing a pivotal role in shaping the movement and pushing for broader inclusion. Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLaverie and Sylvia Rivera were central to the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the wider fight for LGBTQ+ rights. The Trans Community have consistently advocated for their own rights and fought for all LGBTQ+ rights legislation.
In a landmark and controversial decision this year, the UK Supreme Court ruled that gender is defined strictly by biological sex. This ruling has sparked widespread fear and concern among the Trans Community, allies, advocates, educators, and human rights organisations. The ruling, which is being legally challenged, has already impacted policies for policing, workplaces and schools in the UK. Where Trans people (and cisgender people who don’t conform to societies standards of “feminine” or “masculine”) may now be subjected to humiliating scrutiny, physical violations and be restricted from using facilities that align with their gender identity.
This decision has contributed to the UK’s sharp decline in LGBTQ+ safety rankings across Europe, highlighting the urgent need for continued advocacy, education, and solidarity.
Now more than ever, Pride is a protest.
Now more than ever, your voice matters.
Now more than ever, we must stand together.
At EDI Accreditation, we don’t change our logo to rainbow colours for June – that is us, all year round! But, let’s use this month to celebrate the community and the progress which has been made, AND most importantly, to recommit to the work ahead. As the Supreme Court ruling has shown, Equality is not a given—it’s a fight. And we’re in it together for the longterm.
This Pride month, please consider showing your support for LGBTQ+ communities and rights by getting involved – campaign, protest, be heard and donate.
Some great charities supporting LGBTQ+ rights and communities are:
Today is World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue & Development 🌍
There is overwhelming evidence that diverse teams are good for business (despite what Trump and co. would like us to think!).
Yet companies often struggle to move from dialogue, or performative celebrations, to meaningful development and improvement.
This conversation explores how organisations can really start shifting the needle through intentional action. 🧮 Whether quotas are the answer? 💪 What rolling up your sleeves and doing the work looks like? 😴 And if you exhaust your “only’s”?
During our “In Conversation” series, Co-founder Liz Mayers explores a wide range of equality, diversity & inclusion related topics with our Community of experts, for fun and learning.
Today marks the start of Global Intergenerational Week 2025.
In just 5 years time, 47% of the working population will be over 50, yet 82% of over 50s don’t hear back from recruiters or hiring firms. So how do we improve age inclusion in the workplace?
This conversation explores the myths and stereotypes about Gen Zs to Baby Boomers and everyone in between and the benefits of an intergenerational workforce.
During our “In Conversation” series, Co-founder Liz Mayers explores a wide range of equality, diversity & inclusion related topics with our Community of experts, for fun and learning.
Today marks the start of Infertility Awareness Week 2025. To bring awareness to the important issue of infertility in the workplace, we were privileged to host this In Conversation session about Infertility in the Workplace.
The conversation explores the challenges of juggling the rollercoaster journey of infertility, whilst trying still trying to maintain our careers.
1 in 7 couples experience fertility challenges… If you employ 7 people, chances are one of them might be going through a nightmare in silence. Watch the full conversation here 👇
During our “In Conversation” series, Co-founder Liz Mayers explores a wide range of equality, diversity & inclusion related topics with our Community of experts, for fun and learning.
Alexa Stewart, Culture & Engagement Director at Cirkle said “We’re excited to embark on our journey with EDI Accreditation Ltd—an organisation that empowers people-first businesses like Cirkle to stay accountable to their EDI ambitions. Through this process, we aim to establish clear, intersectional, and independent measures of our EDI practices—ones that are both data-driven and people-focused. As a proud BCorp and Blueprinted business, we’re not content to rest on our achievements. Instead, we’re lifting the bonnet to examine even deeper, the inner workings of our agency culture and operations. By collaborating with Liz and her team, we’re eager to uncover what’s working, what could evolve, and how we can make meaningful improvements to the culture and environment we foster for our team at Cirkle.”
Interested to know what starting the journey could mean for you? Please get in touch to find out more.Activate to view larger image,
With Women’s History Month just over and April being Stress Awareness Month, what better time to explore ways for women to support their own careers and wellbeing, from the inside out.
If you are a woman, employ women, or have women in your life you care about, tune in to hear these simple but effective ways to support women better.
Watch the full conversation here 👇
During our “In Conversation” series, Co-founder Liz Mayers explores a wide range of equality, diversity & inclusion related topics with our Community of experts, for fun and learning.
During our “In Conversation” series, Co-founder Liz Mayers explores a wide range of equality, diversity & inclusion related topics with our Community of experts, for fun and learning.
Stress Awareness Month is an annual event observed every April since 1992, dedicated to increasing public awareness about the causes and cures of stress.
If you don’t already have a mental health or wellbeing policy in place, or provide access to support via your workplace, simple steps like:
Setting realistic and achievable targets or deadlines
Making sure people are not regularly having to work additional hours to get through the workload
Creating an open and safe environment where people are not afraid to ask for help and support
can help reduce stress and improve mental health. Which, as well as being kinder to your people, also reduces sickness and absences, boosting productivity!
Today is Transgender Day of Visibility. The day celebrates the joy and resilience of trans and non-binary people, while also combating disinformation, discrimination, and hate.
The day was created in 2010 by trans advocate Rachel Crandall, who wanted a day to celebrate the lives of transgender people while acknowledging the challenges they face.
Today, 15 years later, Transgender Day of Visibility is more needed that ever. With governments in the UK and USA targeting trans people, attempting to remove their rights, making their paths to gender affirming healthcare more difficult than ever and transphobic hate crimes increasing, there has never been a scarier time to be a trans person.
The USA has been grabbing headlines since Trump’s inauguration. With his immediate and extreme Executive Orders aligning with Project 2025 removing Trans rights, before moving on to women and everyone else. People have been likening the dystopian reality unfolding in the US to the book and television series The Handmaid’s Tale. If you want to know more about what is happening in America, Erin Reed is a great LGBTQ+ journalist who gives regular and insightful updates about anti-Trans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation there.
Whilst, for some, it might feel like a more subtle attack in the UK, the Labour Party has been a huge disappointment to the LGBTQ+ communities since coming to power. With ongoing debates about gender recognition, gender affirming health care, single-sex services, and the impact of the Cass Review on youth gender services, and the government taking steps to clarify legal gender definitions – Trans rights are definitely under attack. The Labour government backtracked in February on promised reforms to make it easier for people to legally change gender.
Wes Streeting, Health Secretary claims to be “led by the evidence” but consistently relies on so called “independent evidence” which, at best leaves Trans voices out and at worst, is deliberately anti-trans. The Sullivan Review (commissioned by the Conservatives but being accepted by Labour) to review how data and statistics record gender identity and “biological sex” is yet another example. The review was led by sociology professor Alice Sullivan. However, Sullivan has ties to anti-trans groups such as Sex Matters. Her association with gender-critical groups should have been seen to compromise her position as an independent reviewer and was a “clear sign of bias” but is something the Health Secretary appears willing to overlook.
Aside from the government’s failing to understand, listen to or represent Trans and Non-binary voices, the media constantly echoes and amplifies anti-trans sentiments, spreading misinformation and stirring up hatred.
What is clear to us through our work, is those with strong anti-trans opinions, have rarely met or know any trans people. Their views have been entirely shaped by scare-mongering headlines.
That is why on this day of Trans Visibility we want others to actually see and hear about Trans people from Trans people. Get to know the human beings who are debated and vilified by a government and media who doesn’t know them.
Our Trans Inclusion Charity Partners Global Butterflies provide Trans and Non-binary Inclusion training, workshops and consultancy to help organisations become more inclusive. Their Global Butterflies Fund was established to support organisations working to advance human rights and protections for trans and non-binary communities in the UK and worldwide raising £33,000 in 2024.
Their founders Rachel Reese and Emma Cusdin said “Transgender Day of Visibility is a day where we celebrate the positivity, strength and resilience of transgender people worldwide. It’s a day where we come collectively together, in the face of growing discrimination towards our community, and stand tall, proud and unbowed. We need all our allies, on every day but especially this day to be loud and active.”
So, in these worrying time for Trans & Non-binary people what can you do to show your support and be a better ally?
In the workplace:
Ensure you have a zero-tolerance approach to transphobia and misgendering
Have positive policies affirming your commitment to equality and respect in the workplace
Ensure Leadership teams and hiring managers have been trained on Inclusive Leadership and hiring practices
Train employees on inclusion topics, including Trans & Non-binary inclusion regularly
Encourage participation in Employee Resource or Special Interest Groups for shared support and learning
Create a safe and inclusive culture where all your people have a sense of belonging and can show up as their authentic selves
Personally:
Learn – educate yourself. Seek out podcasts, books and blogs (start with the ones listed above) that will increase your understanding and help you see the human stories behind the headlines
Always make the effort to use people’s preferred pronouns – if you accidentally mess up, apologise and do better in future
If you hear someone being deliberately or repeatedly misgendered, speak up and correct the mistake
Call out transphobia wherever and whenever you see it
Be an ally to anyone who you see experiencing transphobia
If you care about equality, diversity and inclusion in your workplace, check, do you have a Trans & Non-binary inclusion policy or plan? Do you have Trans or Non-binary staff or customers who you think you could support better?
An International Day of Remembrance is not enough. Most “Days of Remembrance” are not enough to truly honour the victims of whatever atrocity took place, be it a murder, a massacre or a war.
For the estimated 15 million victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which lasted almost 400 years, it is definitely not enough.
Some would argue that the Transatlantic Slave Trade was abolished so long ago the victims are no longer alive, so is it still relevant? While it’s difficult to definitively pinpoint the single “last” enslaved person’s death, Hannah Durkin, at Newcastle University, identified an enslaved woman, captured in Africa in the 19th Century and brought to United States called Matilda McCrear who is thought to be one of the last. Matilda died in Selma, Alabama, in January 1940, at the age 83. Daniel Smith, who was believed to be one of the last children of an enslaved person, died on October 19, 2022, at the age of 90. Which brings the distant past frighteningly close.
Even for distant descendants of enslaved people, the implications are still felt today. Our founders’ families are of West Indian descent. The Mayers name undoubtedly linked to John Pollard Mayers, Joseph Mayers or Joshua Mayers Gittens. All registered owners of enslaved people in Barbados. The Pearson name also has ties to the Slave Trade in Jamaica. Surnames giving clues to their ancestral families histories. Family trees that come to an abrupt halt, with DNA tests now the only way to trace their true origins.
There have been many campaigns for reparatory justice in the form of economic and social compensation the over the years. Reparations is a complex and contentious subject. How do you begin to value the lives taken, the trauma and suffering caused and the lasting economic damage? And who is going to foot the bill?
Many countries have issued “statements of regret” instead of apologies, resistant to the idea of accepting responsibility and weakening their stance on owing reparations. In September 2015 the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, on an official visit, told the Jamaican Parliament that “the Black people should cease looking back to slavery days and focus on the future.” As a descendant beneficiary of a fortune made by his enslaver ancestors in Jamaica, the Prime Minister’s statement was particularly insulting and misplaced.
Worse than the refusal to consider reparations or even provide an apology, is that in 1835 after slavery was abolished, British slave owners were compensated for their “loss of property”. A staggering figure (for 1835) of £20million was paid to slave owners. A debt which according to the Tax Justice Network, British taxpayers finally finished paying off in 2015, the same year as Cameron’s visit to Jamaica.
Let that sink in for a moment… every taxpayer in the UK up until 2015 was paying the bill for compensating slave owners. Meaning every Black working person in Britain between 1835 and 2015 was compensating the families that had potentially enslaved their ancestors.
When the history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade is taught in schools, we hear the names of compassionate abolitionists who campaigned for (and eventually achieved) the abolition of slavery on the grounds of social justice and humanity. However, we are not taught about the revolutions of enslaved people taking place in Haiti led by Toussaint Louverture, or Jamaica by key figures such as Samuel Sharpe and Nanny of the Maroons, or across the colonies. Without these uprisings, and a decline in the economic importance of slavery due to the industrial revolution, it is questionable whether the abolition movements would’ve achieved success.
The famous billboard slogan “We did not come to Britain. Britain came to us.” makes an important distinction for those people who are anti-immigration, anti-refugee, (or just plain racist). It is because of Britain’s history, its colonial past and participation in the Transatlantic Slave Trade that we have a wonderful multicultural society today. For a fascinating whistle-stop history lesson on Black History, Colonialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, that you didn’t get at school, we highly recommend checking out Akala’s address at the Oxford Union.
We believe understanding Britain’s true history, not the “white-washed” version taught in schools throughout the Commonwealth, plays a really important role in improving ethnic pride, integration and acceptance. For us, more than a day of remembrance, that acceptance would really honour the victims of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
EDI News 