Emma Reynolds, Labour MP for Wolverhampton North East and Shadow Housing Minister, recently met with LGBT Network Wolverhampton to congratulate them for receiving a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.Emma attended the award ceremony in the Mayor’s Parlour at the Civic Centre.

LGBT Network Wolverhampton is one of only 111 UK volunteering groups honoured with a Queen’s Award this year. The award is given for outstanding achievement by groups of volunteers who regularly devote their time to helping others in the community, improving the quality of life and opportunity for others providing an outstanding service. Groups must be nominated and nominations are assessed by a regional committee before being passed to a national committee for final selection and recommendation to The Queen.

The volunteers at LGBT Network Wolverhampton do a variety of work to help people in their community. For example, they run a third party reporting centre for hate crime, supporting local LGBT people suffering discrimination, harassment, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual assault. Volunteer counsellors have provided over 400 counselling hours since March 2013, helping people who have been victims of hate crimes, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-injury, domestic violence and difficult family relationships.

They also run a weekly LGBT radio show reaching out to the more vulnerable LGBT people in our City and they have organised Wolverhampton Pride in 2012 and 2013. Both these events were real successes which brought over 1,500 people into Wolverhampton.

Emma said “I am delighted that LGBT Network Wolverhampton has been recognised with a Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Over the past two years, its volunteers have done fantastic work across Wolverhampton. The Network currently supports over 50 active volunteers and has so far received over 2,000 visitors to its centre since March 2013, showing how valuable a resource it is for gay, lesbian and transsexual people in my constituency and beyond.

“The group does all of their work with just one permanent paid member of staff, a testament to the fantastic commitment of its volunteers.”

July 2014