Top10 Ways To Be An LGBT+ Campus Leader

In these difficult times, many are asking themselves how they can be better LGBT+ leaders, particularly in the next generation of LGBT+ students who are keen to continue the fierce spirit of activism that their predecessors started. There are many things you can do to become a true LGBT+ leader, at your campus and beyond, to make a difference for the people in our community to ensure that we can continue to be, loudly and proudly, queer. These are our top 10 tips on how to be an LGBT+ campus leader.

Join your university LGBT+ society. As Billy Bragg sang, “there is power in a union”. By coming together with your fellow LGBT+ students, you can collaborate on projects, support one another, and unite to both overcome challenges our community faces as well as celebrate our unique identities in the face of overwhelming resistance from homophobic, biphobic and transphobic narratives in our society. By connecting with your peers you can build networks nationally and internationally, and give yourself a chance to run these societies and networks as an LGBT+ campus leader, making the case for LGBT+ people on your campus.

Help organise National Student Pride in the UK. Pride is an amazingly vital part of celebrating and fighting for our rights, through the visibility and unity it provides. Student Pride is no different, as students come together each year to celebrate the amazing voice in our community and make strong connections. But you can help! Every year, Student Pride is organised by students, and there’s no reason why you can’t volunteer to help put it together, and bring your campus with you!

Help volunteer for an LGBT+ charity or do an internship for an LGBT+ business. What better way to help your community at large than to work for an organisation that’s doing that too? Combine your efforts, get your CV out, and start hunting for LGBT+ charities like the AKT Trust, Micro Rainbow, Stonewall, or businesses like Fainbow or Intermedia, and others that have so much use for volunteers and interns that you’ll find somewhere where you can best place your efforts to do your part for the community. Why not collaborate to bring a charity event to your university?

Apply for an internship for a position at a company’s Diversity & Inclusion department. Diversity and Inclusion in corporate business is a serious thing, ensuring that LGBT+ people can access opportunities that they may otherwise be disadvantaged for. This is also a good chance to consider intersectionality: how else can you help other marginalised communities overcome systemic barriers in your job, and become a leader in tackling discriminatory policies or biases that may exist at companies, and can wield that insight when you return to university ready to implement the changes you did at work. You can find roles like this on websites like myGwork, the LGBT+ business community, with partners like Lewis Silkin, SR Group, and IG.

Be visible on social media by posting and engaging with LGBT+ posts. Be vocal in your community! Social media is a fantastic tool for reaching out to other LGBT+ people and is your chance to both support, and hold up your colleagues to help them reach their true potential. Share your favourite LGBT+ influencers, engage in debates on LGBT+ discussions, and boost LGBT+ voices: on social media, the world is your oyster and it's on you to harness that to make a leader of yourself. Sharing events you and your university society are hosting, for example, is a really positive use of social media!

Become a junior expert in LGBT+ topics by writing for blogs, LGBT+ magazines or launch your own YouTube channel or podcasts. Learn, and pass your knowledge on! By educating yourself on topics, figures, debates, struggles and cultural points, you are in the position to pass this knowledge on to your community. Be that writing articles for journals or websites, or launching your own youtube channel or podcast to discuss and impart the knowledge you’ve found, you can share the information you’ve gathered in ways that make it helpful to other LGBT+ people and really become a leader for LGBT+ issues, both at your campus and beyond.

Pick an LGBT+ research topic for your research. In most schools of academics, you’ll eventually be required to carry out a personal research project. Why not, to make yourself more informed on LGBT+ issues so that you can advise and lead on them, do your project on an LGBT+ matter? Be it discussing the legal reforms for LGBT+ equality, or the discrimination in blood donation practices against Queer men, or how businesses engage in pink capitalism, the possibilities are endless for the sort of research you can do, and the results may be revolutionary in your department.

Help organise local Pride in your town. Some people are fortunate enough to have a Pride close to them. Others are not. If you are in the former, why not find out how you can volunteer and help run your local Pride, to really put your efforts into giving back to your community and its celebrations? And if you’re in the latter, why not gather together other members of the community and build a truly inclusive experience in your town by putting on Pride? Pride festivals and parades are an amazing opportunity to build community relations and celebrate both your LGBT+ community and local community, and to say you had a role in making that happen will certainly make you a leader for others to follow. Link up with your university society, and get the manpower onboard, and you’ll make it even more effective.

Start an LGBT+ Group or Community Project. Noticed a lack of spaces for LGBT+ people in your area to express themselves? Correct that. Form an LGBT+ group, or make a blog, or set up a magazine where LGBT+ people can contribute. We’ve mentioned creating content about LGBT issues, by why not create a platform for LGBT+ people to submit that content to? Be the force for change in your community and give to spaces that will allow LGBT+ people to flourish when they share their work. Community is our lifeblood; the more community groups, the better that gets. Affiliate it as a university society, or publish columns into the university paper - the chances to really make a name on your campus are huge and should be capitalised on.

Organise an LGBT+ Campaign. As you come to involve yourself with LGBT issues and matters, you’ll inevitably come across the many existential threats our community faces domestically and internationally. So why not do something to tackle that? Whether it's fundraising for LGBT+ refugee organisations, starting a campaign to lobby politicians to help secure the safety of jailed LGBT+ activists abroad, or creating posters to combat LGBT+ bullying in schools, there are so many campaigns you can join or set up about matters that will matter to you and your community. Be proactive in creating a world where our community can live freely and equally. Start small - get campus support, build a campaign, and let it snowball until you’re able to manifest the results you need.

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