About us

The Rainbow Flag Award is a national framework designed for schools, colleges and other organisations to take a positive approach to LGBTQ+ inclusion. It was developed by lead organisation, The Proud Trust, in a collaborative process with trusted LGBTQ+ youth organisation partners – Allsorts Youth Project, The Kite Trust, and Waythrough.

The Rainbow Flag Award was first piloted in England in 2017, with thanks to funding rolled out by the Government Equalities Office, via the Department for Education. This much needed funding was available to organisations for them to develop pioneering schemes to be delivered to schools that specifically tackled well documented endemic levels of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying.

Since then the programme has gone from strength to strength, growing not only in the number of schools and organisations electing to take part, but also the number of experienced and skilled LGBTQ+ youth work organisations supporting the programme in their local areas.

The Rainbow Flag Award utilises local LGBTQ+ youth organisations as delivery partners in it’s growth model. This is a core guiding value of the award, which means it has an understanding of local communities and their needs.

By utilising local LGBTQ+ youth organisation partners, the Rainbow Flag Award:

• has a focus on improving the lives of LGBTQ+ people;
• applies a heritage of skills and expertise around LGBTQ+ identities from youth and community work practice;
• uses facilitated learning, interactive tools, plus questioning and exploring techniques in the delivery of training and services;
• supports the uniqueness of each setting engaged with the programme, and encourages them to problem solve their own bespoke solutions, based on knowledge of their context and setting;
• maintains grassroots connections to local youth and LGBTQ+ communities, helping to link people with their local LGBTQ+ services.

Any monies generated by this scheme then help support, often underfunded, LGBTQ+ youth provision locally.