See the full blog on the Association of Chairs website: https://associationofchairs.co.uk/embedding-lived-experience-in-charities/
Embedding lived experience is key to entrenching equity of representation, beneficiary voices and ensuring you remain engaged with the right stakeholders in fulfilling your charities mission. At ItGetsBetterUK, an England and Wales charity where I was a trustee from 2021-24, this represented a series of opportunities when navigating supporting LGBTQIA+ youth’s mental health. Here I share some of the learnings from our process growing engagement and voice in the LGBTQ+ community.
Having been established in late 2017, ItGetsBetterUK is a message as well as a charity- it supports LGBTQIA+ youth with the message that no matter how you are feeling it gets better being LGBTQIA+. This channels experiences and insight from within the LGBTQIA+ community, stories of hope and support, and provides them a platform to reach LGBTQIA+ youth, and the community, who need it.
When I joined ItGetsBetterUK most of our presence was on social media and hosted on our website in videos, and I saw an opportunity to highlight lived experiences via other means. I set about building a blog for the charity, helping complement its voice of hope with messages and storytelling from those within the community.
Whilst blog interviews were conducted with standardised questions, interviewees were encouraged to share their own journeys and lived experience. Diverse views were actively sought so LGBTQ+ youth could see themselves in those who were writing- see the Blog here: https://www.itgetsbetter.org.uk/blog
The blogs spoke candidly and courageously about mental health challenges and sharing learnings for the community from lived experience. It was a privilege to host those reflections and be able to share them. Where necessary content warnings were used to ensure readers were safeguarded.
Acknowledging the intersection between LGBTQIA+ lived experiences and mental health we ran mental health first aider training for all volunteers. This was crucial to ensuring mental health was something we reflected our commitment to within and without the charity. Our volunteers would attend prides and community events, engaging directly with the community, a responsibility we all took very seriously. Running this training equipped us with tools to sensitively open up conversations with volunteers and those within the community and honour their lived experiences.
A third tranche of work which enabled us to develop our conversations around lived experience was building our support resources. In particular, I was asked for any Asian-specific LGBTQIA+ support resources or partners I could recommend. This multi-faceted approach to embedding lived experiences provided a framework for community engagement and bringing the community into decision making with the charity in the future, key next steps for us in supporting the community with authenticity, sensitivity and fostering belonging at time where LGBTQIA+ rights are under threat.
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