Pride in Surrey Gender Diversity Leader in British LGBT Awards Top 10 Future Leaders
Pride in Surrey are a a non-profit community interest company who educate, connect and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community across Surrey.
Kim Warren is a gender diversity leader for the company and has recently been shortlisted as one of the Top 10 Future Leaders in this years British LGBT Awards.
Throughout LGBT History month, many organisations take the opportunity to educate people on the history of the LGBT community, as well as events and fundraisers taking place throughout the year.
Organisations such as Pride in Surrey are important for many reasons, including providing a safe space for the LGBT community and educating others.
Kim said:
"There's still a lot of people who don't necessarily know, for example, any transgender people or don't really know much about transgender, especially in the context of the current media environment around it.
"So it's important to have organisations that are capable of doing that kind of education piece."
Kim Warren recently was named in the British LGBT Awards as a Top 10 Future Leader, which is credit to their work towards to improve inclusion and diversity culture in many businesses.
As well as working for Pride in Surrey, Kim also works for companies such as Trans in the City, an organisation in London who aim to work with businesses to improve transgender inclusion.
Kim is one of many who are striving for inclusion nationwide, they said:
" It's amazing to get work recognised.
"I work through these channels with so many other amazing people who worked their socks off to kind of improve the situation for LGBT people in this country in so many ways that sometimes it almost feels a little bit random.
"I've kind of been singled out from that group when there's so many other people who deserve to be recognised like this."
Organisations such as Pride in Surrey are working towards educating people and to promote equality and inclusion, through events such as their annual Pride event.
Whilst there is much to celebrate on how far the country has come, Kim still wants to continue to push forwards.
They said:
" A really big one that is important to highlight at the moment is in the field of transgender health care, because I think a lot of people do not realise how bad this has become in terms of access to health care for transgender people who wish to transition.
"Gender clinics at the moment are the only way to access, for example hormones, and there are only, I think, seven of them in England and these have waiting lists of between three and five years from referral to see a specialist against the NHS target of 18 weeks.
"Once you see a specialist, it's often requires a second appointment before you'll get any treatment, so people are waiting 5 to 7 years to start a transition.
"I think that's something that more people should know, so that we can get more pressure to improve this."
More information on Pride in Surrey can be found on their website at https://www.prideinsurrey.org/ .