Last year Trans Pride Brighton signed the lease for the Trans Pride Centre, the only trans and non-binary focussed community centre in the country. Here we provide radical support for grassroots community needs, we host addiction support services, provide help for homeless trans people with referrals, toiletries and clothes. Our Queer Living Room last winter gave people a warm space, hot meal and a place to connect for free. Pause.
Unfortunately our two post-pandemic Trans Pride Brightons’ have taken a massive hit through the weirdest of unforeseen circumstances - one year we had event-wide card machine failures and the next was unrelenting, ferocious windy weather.This forced us to cancel the entire park event this year.
This is where almost 100% of our fundraising happens to help us continue operating over the next 12 months.
This was completely out of our control, and despite our very best efforts, we have lost money hand over fist for two years now. I need to explain to you all what this means. Pause.
We are now talking about closing the Trans Pride Centre for good in March next year.
We can’t even commit to covering the bare minimum of costs to hire a centre manager for 3 days a week; and it’s already closed for our weekly drop in service.
This is honestly devastating for all of us founders, the board of trustees and the dedicated volunteers who have all worked incredibly hard - voluntarily - putting in our blood, sweat and tears into this project for 10 years out of pure love for our community.
Let me tell you now that we haven’t come this far and achieved this much to go down without a big fuckin fight. (Pause for cheers)
Today, the start of trans awareness week, we are launching a winter campaign to raise £27,500 to keep this vital space open for a year. With that money we can pay the rent, keep the lights and heating on, and pay for a community centre manager one day a week.
All we need is to get through the next year, keep the doors open and we’ll have the breathing space to plan our next steps to secure us into the future. We have big, ambitious plans that we intend to see through.
We have consulted with our community and for the first time in our history have agreed to open up to offers of donations and sponsorship from companies who can show how much they support trans and non-binary people. I can’t explain how much potential this unlocks for our charity. We need your support now or the danger is that the trans community will lose one of its most important assets.
I’ve got to know some of the people who use the Trans Pride Centre and I’m shocked at how vulnerable some are, y’know, you read the stats and figures about how trans people are more likely to be homeless or forced into drugs or sex work just to survive, but its another thing to know these peoples names, look into their eyes and know some of their horrific stories, knowing the most I and we can do is give them a hot meal, a bag of donated cosmetics and a referral to the council.
Without your immediate help, we’re gonna lose the Trans Pride Centre, our community will lose the only ‘by trans people, for trans people’ space it has. Please donate to our fundraiser here: https://transpridebrighton.org/trans-pride-centre-fundraiser/