Please join us on Wednesday 23 June 2021 from 6pm for O:pen's Pride month event. The event will be online, and we'll be hosting a variety of social breakout rooms for catching-up and networking in smaller groups, so do have your drinks ready.

Places are strictly limited, so please register on EventBrite to be sure of your booking.

Our theme will be 'Pride in our Community'. We'll be joined at the start by GiveOut, and we'll be supporting this wonderful charity's fundraising efforts both before and during the event.

GiveOut is an award-winning international LGBTQI foundation enabling individuals and corporate allies to give in one place to support LGBTQI activism worldwide. GiveOut and TransWave, one of their grant partner organisations, will start the event with a short discussion and introduction to their work, followed by socialising and networking.

O:pen members are welcome, and encouraged, to donate via GiveOut's total giving page here – please do consider making a donation even if you can't make it to the event. Your donation can make a real difference on its own, but in even more good news, the donations raised on this page will be topped by contributions from O:pen supporting firms, Travers Smith and LCP.

Why GiveOut? Across the world, LGBTQI people face appalling human rights abuses for being themselves. Courageous activists are doing vital work to improve the lives of LGBTQI people, but they lack resources and funding is fragile, especially in the Global South and East. The LGBTQI community and allies want to provide support, but it is not always easy to do so. GiveOut’s purpose is to help address this urgent need by providing a platform for them to give tax efficiently in one place to fund LGBTQI human rights activism worldwide. The charity pools the donations it receives to provide grants to LGBTQI organisations globally, ensuring they have more of the resources they need to defend their communities, tackle inequality and campaign for lasting change.

GiveOut's supporters are now funding over 30 activist-led organisations working across five continents. They have supported work including LGBTQI movement building across Sub-Saharan Africa, the provision of safe houses in the Middle East and North Africa, the establishment of the first trans networks in the Caribbean and Western Balkans, and the distribution of humanitarian aid to LGBTQI communities hit by COVID-19.

This year, GiveOut has launched its Pride with Purpose campaign to celebrate businesses that are marking Pride by supporting the movement for LGBTQI human rights worldwide. The campaign is underpinned by a report of the same that provides recommendations for businesses looking to be better global allies. To find out more visit https://pridewithpurpose.com.

If you would like to bring friends or colleagues in the pensions industry and/or with an interest in D&I or LGBTQ+ issues in pensions, please get in touch.

Please take a look at our O:pen website for more information about O:pen.

We look forward to seeing you (virtually) on 23 June.