Hello and welcome to a new day for LGBT HERO.

LGBT HERO’s identity has evolved over the past few years as our name has become more familiar in the community and the charitable sector. We went from ‘Health Equality and Rights Organisation’, to ‘HERO’, to ‘LGBT HERO’. What we once conceived as an umbrella organisation sitting atop GMFA and OutLife has since become the core name to which most of our work is attributed. The more people heard of LGBT HERO the more they liked and connected with it. And why wouldn’t they, it’s a great name and people remember it very quickly. Any organisation would love brand recognition like this. When our community sees our work, they see LGBT HERO, and so, we wanted to make our branding more appealing to our service users.

The result: our brand new logo.

 

The fresh LGBT HERO logo is softer, less corporate, and more reflective of a frontline organisation that is approachable and there to help. We love its soothing colour palette and waves and we hope you do too!

However, this is the first step in some changes. We’re flipping how we present ourselves as an organisation. From today we will no longer be presenting as a parent organisation and LGBT HERO will become the primary way we present ourselves.

So today we want to reintroduce you to LGBT HERO – the national health and wellbeing charity for LGBTQ+ people supporting our communities to lead happier, healthier lives. 

With this change in how we present ourselves this also means some other changes.

First, you may have noticed we have a new site. We have merged the old LGBT HERO site with the OutLife site. From today www.lgbthero.org.uk will offer information, advice, support and signpost people to services. This approach allows us to streamline the best of OutLife with LGBT HERO and present a more comprehensive organisation that can deliver the quality information, advice and support what LGBTQ+ people need in 2021 and beyond.

What happens to OutLife? OutLife as a resource tends to appeal to a much younger queer audience which is not what we originally set it up for. What we feel is best for OutLife would be to develop a magazine style resource for younger LGBTQ+ people - a guide to life that helps young LGBTQ+ people to move forward and better prepare them for life as an adult. That fits very much into the type of audience that already connected to OutLife.  

What about GMFA? I'm sure some of you might feel alarmed after reading above about what happens to GMFA. At this moment in time, nothing. GMFA will stay exactly the same. The website is still there. It still hosts all the great information and advice pages that people have come to rely on . GMFA’s social media will still publish a lot of our campaigns and direct people to the resources on the GMFA website. GMFA will remain a resource that LGBT HERO provides for gay, bisexual and trans men who have sex with men. Especially men who are living with HIV. We want GMFA moving forward to be a resource that supports the men who need it the most.

At some point in the future we will open up a conversation with gay, bi and trans men who have sex with men about what they would like from GMFA and how we present it. But right now, I can reassure you that absolutely nothing changes with GMFA. And any money that’s raised to support the work we do through GMFA will be assigned to a budget that support gay, bi and trans men who have sex with men.

What exactly will LGBT HERO offer?

Moving forward, the majority of our programmes, interventions and prevention programmes will be delivered through LGBT HERO via our website and social media platforms with some offline work. However, we do have some targeted services that will help us reach different communities. 

Here's what we will provide:

www.lgbthero.org.uk: Our site will offer information, advice and support for all things involved with LGBTQ+ life. We expect this site to support over 900,000 people a year.

FindOut: Is a service finder for LGBTQ+ people living in London. It currently has over 500 entries and you can find anything from sports and social clubs to sexual health services to online support. Over 10,000 people use this service every year.  

Online Peer-Support Forums: LGBT HERO provides an online peer-support forum where LGBTQ+ people can talk, listen and support one another in a non-judgemental way moderated by trained staff and volunteers. Our peer-support forums are visited by over 60,000 people with hundreds of new conversations every year. 

HangOuts: In 2020, as a response to the COVID pandemic, LGBT HERO set up online peer-support groups for LGBTQ+ people. These support groups work to bring people, who may be feeling isolated, lonely or not connected with the community, to come together and talk about all things health and life. Our HangOuts programme has several different groups including support for LGBTQ+ people from minority backgrounds. The HangOuts programme has supported nearly 1000 people so far. 

GMFA - the gay men's health project: Probably our most well-known service, GMFA was set up in 1992 to tackle the high numbers of gay and bisexual men dying from HIV and AIDS. Today, GMFA provides gay, bisexual and trans men with info, advice and support through www.gmfa.org.uk and develops social media focused campaigns in a tone that gay men have come to know GMFA for. GMFA also supports men living with HIV through support groups and creating work that helps tackle HIV stigma such as 'The Undetectables'. GMFA currently reaches over 2.2 million people a year.  

FS magazine: FS is published six times a year and offers a voice for gay, bi and trans men as part of a service we deliver through GMFA. FS tackles the harder issues such as alcohol, drugs, chemsex, racism within the gay community, mental health and suicide and general sex and relationship advice. FS is currently read by over 500k people a year and you can download it via the FS app on iOS.

Campaigns: Developing campaigns and materials is a big part of what we do at LGBT HERO. Over the years we have developed 100s of campaigns and 1000s of supportive materials. In the last few years some of our most successful campaigns have been:

• Me. Him. Us - a sexual wellbeing campaign for Black and South Asian men - MHU has reached over six million people since its launch in 2018,
• Project Happy - a campaign to highlight the high numbers of LGBTQ+ people who die by suicide and
• Our hate crime awareness campaign 'Be an Ally / What next'.
• Some other notable campaigns we've produced are 'Safer Chems' and 'The Undetectables'.  

Through all our services, we estimate that LGBT HERO interacts directly with over three million people a year, with up to six million impressions through our campaigns, social media, media opportunities. 

And in the future, we aim to develop more work in the following areas:

•   Online peer-support for all LGBTQ+ people on different topics relevant to people’s needs in 2021 and beyond.
•   Personal development groupwork and workshops such as ‘building your confidence’ and ‘self-care’ along with more training to support LGBTQ+ people to better equip themselves with modern life.
•   LGBT HEROES – a new programme designed to support health and wellbeing activists in a modern world.
•   Campaigns focused on mental health, suicide prevention, hate crime, discrimination and other health and social inequalities LGBTQ+ people face using our expertise in developing campaigns since the 1990s.
•   We’ll also be looking at how we interact with our community and how people get involved by developing action panels and advisory boards. More info about this coming soon.

And there we have it. To some people, especially if you are a keen GMFA supporters, you won't notice the change. To others, this may feel like a brand-new organisation. What I want you to take from this is that LGBT HERO is stepping up at a time when our community needs more on a national level. LGBT HERO will try its best to be that organisation you can come to rely on.

We want to be there for you, to support you,  to help you and help our community to lead happier, healthier, lives. Today is our first step forward in doing this.

If you have any question about any of the above please feel free to email us on [email protected] 

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MORE INFO: | About LGBT HERO | Meet the team | Board of Directors | Get Involved |