GiveOut has released its Annual Impact Report to recognise what its grant partners have achieved for LGBTQ+ people in the last year.

From helping members of the community escape Afghanistan to challenging homophobic laws in Hungary, the award-winning international community foundation exists to help protect and improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people.

It does this by pooling the donations it receives to provide grants to LGBTQ+ organisations all over the world, which in turn helps ensure they have the resources they need to help members of the community and tackle inequality.

Its supporters now fund 37 LGBTQ+ organisations in total, including eight new partners – which in turn has helped countless numbers of queer people throughout the last year.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, OutRight Action International launched an emergency appeal which GiveOut followed by activating its LGBTQI Emergency Fund – all donations of which went to organisations protecting queer people in Ukraine and neighbouring countries.

“We can’t rely on anyone else to take up the needs of our communities, it’s ourselves,” said Paul Jansen, Senior Director of Global Programs and Grantmaking at OutRight Action International.

In addition to this, GiveOut’s world-first LGBTQI Climate Fund has supported activists working to tackle the climate crisis.

This includes the Tonga Leitis Association, which has been giving training to those running hurricane emergency shelters to ensure that LGBTQ+ people can be looked after appropriately.

Following the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the country fell to the Taliban and queer people found themselves in grave danger.

Rainbow Railroad is one of the organisations that has worked tirelessly to help evacuate members of the community and relocate them somewhere safe.

GiveOut’s support raised £100,000 for these efforts which helped in three key ways:

  • Supported a trans-led safe house in Pakistan which sheltered 150 LGBTQ+ Afghans fleeing their home country;
  • Enabled the evacuation of 226 people;
  • Supported the provision of direct financial and humanitarian assistance to those in Afghanistan or one of its neighbouring countries.

Devon Matthews of Rainbow Railroad said: “It is such a testament to how responsive the community can be when all alarms are going off, if we provide the necessary support.”

You can read more about GiveOut’s work in its Annual Impact Report here.