2022 Reopening Fundraiser

We’re a trans rights organisation based in Northern Ireland, and we’re known for running the Belfast Trans Resource Centre, the only community centre for trans people in the UK and Ireland.

We provide space, resources, and financial support for a large and growing number of community events, support groups, skills programmes and other initiatives that our communities need. The BTRC is run by trans volunteers, for trans communities, and our roster of events each month is varied and open. We’ve consulted trans communities locally on healthcare services, and we’ve trained and educated countless staff on inclusion and accessibility.

We were quick to close the BTRC at the onset of COVID-19 restrictions in Northern Ireland, and have unfortunately been required to stay closed until now. As we slowly re-open and re-establish our services and community venue, we need your help. During 2020 and 2021 we provided hundreds of trans individuals with emergency support funding for rent, food and utility bills, and opened online community venues for trans people to keep in contact with each other during the protracted restrictions here in Northern Ireland. As re re-open, we’re hoping to make our work even better.

We do plenty of other work besides running our community centre, though. Our small staff team works tirelessly and skilfully at local, national and even international and United Nations levels to protect and forward trans rights in Northern Ireland. This year alone, we’ve fought for trans healthcare in Belfast, represented trans rights to the Council of Europe and United Nations Human Rights Council, and supported efforts to protect global LGBTI rights. We’ve learned from and taught trans rights defenders across the world.

We punch above our weight in the work that we do, because we’re grounded in and surrounded by trans people here in the North. Our office being in the BTRC makes sure we don’t lose sight of what’s most important. Whether we’re supporting someone to access emergency housing, or holding governments to account, our team is ready.

Through community initiatives like our Centre, we’re facing higher demand for support, especially intensive support for individuals suffering from increasing transphobia, hate crime and abuse, and from the isolation that comes from family rejection. We’ve been able to work with volunteers here to develop what we can provide to trans communities, and have seen the enormous good that comes from community based supports like ours.

With your donation, you can help trans communities here in Belfast and across Northern Ireland, and get us through what is a frightening and hostile time for many, especially those who are particularly marginalised in our society.

We’re working with funders to grow our work, but being without a government for over 2½ years and doing specialist work means that we rarely fit into funding structures, so we rely on support from you to do our work.

We’d love to have your support for what we do. Whether you can give £1, £10, £100 or £1,000, everything goes to ensuring trans people are supported and our communities have space to be safe, to heal, and to grow together.

We are in a very dangerous time for trans rights in the UK and Ireland right now. Look at a newspaper on any given day and you’ll see that trans people are the current focus of a tremendous amount of hatred, vitriol and abuse. Abuse that’s endless, especially for those working as activists and rights defenders like us at the BTRC. However, because we’re surrounded by community members daily, we also see that this hostile debate on trans people’s lives is damaging trans people of all ages, of all genders, and of all backgrounds.

We’re aiming higher than before and are raising £25,000 to meet the costs of reopening our community centre and re-establishing our services as the pandemic hopefully eases. Every single penny we receive will go directly to trans rights work and to trans community services here in Northern Ireland. It will ensure isolated people can access community spaces, keep the lights on in our community centre and provide training and support to those on the coal face of human rights work.

If you support us with £25 or more, we’ll send you a delightful exclusive enamel pin by a local trans artist, no matter where you are in the world. These will be fulfilled in the latter half of 2022 or earlier if the goal is met before then!

Thank you so much for your help, it means the world. Trans rights 2022!