Help us write our next chapter
When I built Gaysians and gaysians.org which provide advisory services to charities and organisations to better serve the needs of LGBTQ+ South Asians, I was also working in the media and driving audiences to access these organisations on our site.
Gaysians became an umbrella brand for many support groups, organisations and charities all over the UK and later, around the world. People often ask how we became so successful and I think there are a number of factors, but a key one being the shared desire by some groups to work together at that time.
Gaysians shared the social media posts and events and campaigns of every group we met in the community and before any of this, I went out and met many people and groups to understand their needs and find a community of my own.
In many ways, Gaysians was built on a need I had to find a community to fit the family shaped hole in my life. As well as the problem of lack of funding and marketing expertise that the groups themselves faced and I felt able to contribute to solving by listing them on a site I built myself and then promoted in my media work. It was quite simple, really.
Over time, the website has become an essential resource for many people who identify as LGBTQ+ and South Asian to find community and support. South Asians typically under-index in accessing the system for support services as culturally, we tend to rely on family. But what happens when we can’t rely on family and simply don’t know where we can go for help?
The website has provided support to many thousands of people over the years and our email inbox has offered more personal advice and connection for many. I had no idea of the volume of emails, phone calls and messages that would flood in after those early BBC radio interviews and it was overwhelming to say the least. But the realisation of the scale of the challenge was also a motivator to provide a set of services that catered to the broad range of the community’s needs and to work for support service providers to be much more aware of our specific needs and often complex experiences.
It always feels like it’s not enough, but there has been progress and I see it in the presence of more of us in many spheres of society. After several years of campaigning I and Gaysians took a break to re-evaluate and assess where we go now.
Times have changed and after building an engaged audience on Twitter, it is no longer a safe platform for us to be active on. Meta platforms restrict our access and it has become much harder to reach our own audiences, let alone new ones that need what we are providing. Our communities seem as fragmented as they were when we first worked to resolve this problem almost a decade ago.
Of course all of this is a push-back to the progress that so many community organisations and activists have made this past decade and as ever, we are not alone. It is with renewed conviction that we enter this next chapter of our story to continue our work and fight for progress.
Here are some of our objectives for 2026. We are aiming to raise £3,000, which is what we raised in 2020 when we first launched this fundraiser. This is the only funding we receive and we’d be grateful for your donations to help us with:
re-evaluate all our service providers and source new partners where needed. The needs and shape of the community has changed and we want to ensure we have these needs covered, especially for trans and nb services.
media campaign - we want to push the site and resources to a new generation of LGBTQ+ South Asians who are not aware of the services we offer. Many are younger people and many are of all ages who have come to explore their gender and sexuality more recently.
more written content (letters and interviews) on the site of the lived experience of trans, nb and neurodiverse LGBTQ+ South Asians as well as more stories from a range of ages.
We are also working on a few initiatives that require growing our volunteer team with an events producer and social media & marketing person. If you would be interested in speaking with us then please get in touch via our contact page here.
With love,
Reeta