• About Us
  • Brief overview of Stonewall Cymru
  • How Stonewall Cymru works
    • Stonewall Cymru Council
  • Key priorities for 2005 - 2008
  • Meet the Team
  • Getting involved
  • Publications
  • Media Enquiries
  • Stonewall Cymru eBulletin
  • Job opportunities
  • Contact Us
  • Counted In! report
  • Request a Stonewall Cymru speaker
  • LGB Mental Health Research Project
• News
• Look Out
• Campaigns
• Support Us
• Across Wales
• Workplace
• Information Bank
• Events

How Stonewall Cymru works

Stonewall Cymru aims to achieve legal equality and social justice for lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Wales.

We aim to provide an all Wales organisation that will work individually and in partnership with agencies, organisations, statutory bodies and individuals inside and outside the LGB sector to:

• Promote the human rights and equal treatment of LGB people;
• Challenge discrimination against LGB people;
• Articulate the needs and interests of LGB people and represent these to the National Assembly for Wales and other appropriate bodies;
• Consolidate and develop the infrastructure with LGB communities across Wales to enable them to contribute to and have representation in policy developments.

We do this in a wide variety of ways, including policy development, consultation and liaison with relevant groups and organisations, provision of information and education (attitudinal and institutional), lobbying, community development, capacity building as well as good practice design and advice.

We will strive to ensure our work reflects the diversity of the LGB population living in Wales. We are committed to cross-Wales representation; gender and language parity, minority and marginalised communities representation, cross-party political representation, and representation from trade unions. 

Stonewall Cymru currently employs 4 staff based in Cardiff and Bangor.

Stonewall Cymru Council

Each year our members elect representatives to the Stonewall Cymru Council. The Council inputs into the overall strategic direction of Stonewall Cymru. The Council is represented on the Stonewall GB Board by its co-chairs.

Building on the first three years of Stonewall Cymru

In the period of the first business plan (2002 - 2005), the LGB forum (which later became Stonewall Cymru), created a supporter database of some 500 LGB people across Wales in order to assist the National Assembly of Wales with meeting its commitment to consultation for effective equalities policy-making. Two part-time workers, and members of the Stonewall Cymru Council, were highly successful in persuading some employers and public service providers to consider sexual-orientation as part of their equality and diversity focus.

Since its foundation in 2002, Stonewall Cymru has achieved a great deal:

We carried out the first ever survey of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people in Wales, Counted Out, ensuring lesbian, gay and bisexual equality issues are firmly on the agenda of policy makers in Wales.

We have worked with employers to provide them with guidance on tackling work place discrimination faced by LGB people. We have also published information in Welsh and in English about new employment rights and publicised this information within the lesbian and gay communities.

We have set up the Look Out project to monitor the Welsh press, challenge homophobic journalism and to provide accurate information about the lives of LGB people in Wales.

The Assembly's sex and relationships guidance now states that teachers should be able to deal with issues of sexuality or sexual orientation honestly, sensitively and in a non-discriminatory way. This effectively abolished Section 28 here before it was repealed in England.

Our Community Development Programme has worked with a wide range of community groups during the last few years including extensive consultation with LGB organisations and individuals across Wales. In 2004 we completed an audit of LGB community groups and held meetings with LGB individuals across Wales

We have argued strongly from an LGB perspective during discussions around the forthcoming Commission for Equality and Human Rights. There is still a great deal that needs to be done. The Counted Out survey findings demonstrate that equality and social justice for LGB people is far from being achieved, and that efforts towards this goal are still necessary.

Our achievements in our first three years would not have been possible without the commitment and energy of our partners, which include LGB community activists, other equality organisations and Government.  Thank you to those individuals and organisations that have worked with us.

Many employers and public service providers now come to us for advice, information and training on all aspects of LGB equality.  We are working with police forces across Wales, health providers, local councils, the equalities commissions, advice providers, ACAS, trades unions, the media, equalities champions in the voluntary sector, and most particularly the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government. 

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