Unilever ensures its support for LGBTQ+ groups isn’t a once-a-year effort during Pride Month through its “United We Stand” Pride campaign with community activists.

Focusing on the American South, where LGBTQ+ communities are currently underserved, the campaign is a year-round commitment of allyship and targeted support from the multinational consumer goods company. This includes implementing programmes to lower hate crime rates, create safe spaces, increase access to services, fight conversion therapy and HIV stigma, address youth homelessness, and offer nutritional support.

This year’s fourth annual campaign counts Black trans activist Sean Ebony Coleman, queer filmmaker Tourmaline, and creative agency RanaVerse as partners.

Through Coleman’s work identifying key grassroots organisations that are providing LGBTQ+ aid in this area, the campaign supports Forum for Equality (Monroe, La.), Freedom Oklahoma (Moore, Okla.), SouthCarolina Black Pride (Clemson, S.C.), The Knights and Orchids Society (Florence, Ala.), and PFLAG Springfield (Southern Missouri).

To ensure the campaign focuses on impact and results, Tourmaline will direct a film documenting its progress over a year, which will feature individuals representing intersectional LGBTQ+ identities and experiences, including those from Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and transgender/non-conforming communities.

Coleman, who has already worked with Unilever on LGBTQ+ related diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) campaigns and strategies as a consultant, also leads Destination Tomorrow, a US-based LGBTQ+ organisation that serves communities in the South Bronx and Atlanta areas with educational, financial, housing, health and personal support programmes.

Through biotechnology company Gilead Science’s TRANScend Community Impact Fund, Coleman is also the only Black trans grantmaker in the US and provides finding to transgender and gender nonconforming-led grassroots organisations.

To view the “United We Stand” campaign video, click here.