O2 celebrating Pride month throughout June

[Chris_K]

Hey everyone,

Just before we kick off with the weekend, I wanted to highlight the importance of Pride month, what O2 is doing, and why it's so important - not just for the LGBTQ+ community - but for ourselves as well. We're a diverse and inclusive company and we have several internal employee-led networks (such as Proud @ O2) to provide practical tools and create a culture with inclusivity truly at the very heart, where our employees can bring their whole selves to work.

With restrictions and social distancing still in place, unfortunately celebrating Pride in the usual way hasn't been able to happen this year or even last year, so with many of the celebrations taking place virtually and online, we've been working very closely with the NSPCC, LGBT Foundation, and more.

NSPCC
The internet can offer LGBTQ+ children and young people a space where they have a sense of belonging and community, a space where they can explore their own identity. But it can also be a place where they are exposed to bullying or inappropriate content – even more so in a time when more is happening online than ever before.

That is where together with the NSPCC, we're looking to create positive change online, especially for young people to ensure they have a safe space to research, play, and connect with others in safety.

You can read more about this here.

LGBT Foundation
We're in partnership with LGBT Foundation, a national charity delivering advice, support and information services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) communities. This includes face-to-face counselling, a helpline, a sexual health programme, and much more. They say: "Every year we give a voice, provide help and offer hope to 40,000 people. We work in partnership with others to build strong, cohesive and influential LGBT communities and promote attitude change in society, reaching 600,000 people online each year."

Working with LGBT Foundation, we hope to help empower one another to reach even more LGBTQ+ people and communities to offer support wherever it's needed.

The O2
Let's not forget The O2 and the England Rugby team, who are also helping to celebrate Pride month with us. At The O2, we have our 'steptacular Pride staircase' where if you snap a photo of yourself on them you could win 2 tickets to see Steps live at The O2, plus a £250 Icon Outlet Gift Card. For more information and how to enter, check this link.

England Rugby
Our friends over at England Rugby are helping celebrate and promote Pride month too, bringing inspiring stories from the world of rugby and highlighting them to the world - such as The Steelers, the world's first gay rugby club. You can read more about them here or you can even watch the fantastic Steelers documentary on Amazon Prime Video, which is available as an O2 Extra.

Entertainment
If you're looking to catch up on some entertainment this Pride month, there's a few options below we've highlighted for you:

• The start of season 2 of Love, Victor has dropped on the Disney+ streaming service which you can start catching up on now
• There's a new documentary dropping on 25 June on Disney+. It's a new six-part series called PRIDE, chronicling the struggle for LGBT+ civil rights in America
• If you're looking for music to listen to, there's loads of Pride 2021 curated playlists out there on many of the most popular music streaming services, such as this one on Apple Music.

[jonsie]

I'm not being funny and I'm all for diversity in today's society but do we really need all this?

What, with this and BLM I just feel we don't need it being pushed down our throats constantly

Sorry if this upsets anyone....

[MI5]

I think I misunderstood pride month......
Anyone want to buy 30 lions?

[LukasB]

@jonsie I think as long as this happens we need pride month

[jonsie]

Quote ::

While he doesn’t know for certain what motivated the attack, Curtis, who is bisexual, thinks “it possibly could [have been a hate crime] because of the amount of hate crimes that have happened this month.”

...or possibly not....

[LukasB]

Well maybe this one then

[madasaf1sh]

@jonsie

I though this too, but after been involved in a project at work, with a charity who work with young people in this field, they explained that its about inclusivity not just for LGBQTIA+ but for society as a whole.

I stand by the mantra my mom taught me as a kid "Treat people as you want to be treated"

And for me that's seeing someone as a person and not a label or colour of their skin, or where they come from (although i draw the line at people from Lancashire, lol)

Also i wonder how many people know what started pride, and that it is an American import and it seems to have been lost to a world of commercialism.