What Pride Month means to us

Let’s start with a short history lesson. Pride Month is celebrated each year (in June) to honour the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, US. Many people think this uprising was a critical moment for the Gay Liberation Movement in the US. Today, it’s a month of joy with parades, picnics, parties, workshops and concerts taking place all over the world. We encourage you to read more on the Library of Congress website.

What’s the significance of Pride Month?

The primary purpose of Pride Month and all the related activities, apart from celebrating pride, was to raise awareness of the rights of LGBTQIA+ people. People behind this idea wanted to put pressure on the authorities to stop human rights violations. We fully support this idea, not just with our words but with our actions, too!

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

Pride Month at NoA Ignite

It all starts with our values:

• Diversity: our international team embraces individual differences, promotes diversity, and maintains an environment of openness, acceptance and respect.
• Unity: we move forward together. Every win is a collective one.
• Trust: we fully trust in the skills and good intentions of our colleagues, business partners and clients. We always communicate in an open and transparent way.
• Curiosity: we bring excitement and energy into the work we do. We offer everyone the freedom to explore different fields to improve themselves and our service offering.

But these are just words, right? How do those values influence our work and life? Well, the answer is multi-faceted!

People Partner

We have a special position in our structures called a People Partner (Peppa). It's one person elected once a year by all employees, to whom they can report anonymously a potential problem involving a lack of respect or discrimination.

At NoA Ignite, there's no room for discrimination based on gender, orientation, origin or values, and the role of a People Partner is to ensure this status quo. The People Partner is also responsible for the sense of security and freedom of communication in the event of possible unequal treatment.

Our support for women and LGBT organisations

For many years now, we have been we have supporting and working with NGO organisations that support women and the LGBT community. Below, you can find some examples of our support:

Women’s Rights Centre

The mission of the Women’s Rights Centre (pl. Centrum Praw Kobiet – CPK) is to combat all forms of violence and discrimination against women in private, public and professional spaces. CPK strives to create conditions enabling women to exercise their human rights, including the right to live free from violence and discrimination, and to implement the constitutional principle of gender equality.

In 2021, we have donated 30,000 PLN for the CPK’s work. But we did more than just financial support. Together, we’ve organised a hackathon to find solutions to gender-equality-related problems in many Polish companies. We also aided CPK’s team in the process of transition and the implementation of the new ideas that were born during our hackathon.

Cracowian Equality Centre

The Cracowian Equality Centre / DOM EQ is a 120 sqm of safe space. It was adapted to the needs of people with disabilities and open to everyone, including lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and heterosexual people. Dom EQ is also for people who do not identify with any gender or sexual identity. Czyżówka 43 street – it’s an address in Cracow where everyone can feel at home.

We have supported them for a whole year – from June 2021 to June 2022 with monthly donations of 750 PLN. Our support gives this organisation a sense of stability but also proves that our support is not a fad caused by Pride Month.

The Equality.org.pl

This foundation (pl. Fundacja Równość.org.pl) supports and empowers LGBT people outside large urban centres and cities and gives them the opportunity to develop and engage. The foundation puts emphasis on meeting the needs of the beneficiaries of their activities. As a part of their work, they focus on cooperation with other organisations and the local authorities.

For some time now, we have been supporting them financially – 1,000 PLN per month. We have also helped them with their last project – the creation of the milk.org.pl digital platform, where you can find interesting interviews with LGBTQIA activists and sign petitions on topics important to the community. There’s also a project module to help people who want to act, invent, plan and organise themselves in their communities. Milk.org.pl is a knowledge base and a safe place for all the queer and engaged people who would like to start acting, not only locally, and organise simple events, demonstrations and drive advocacy.

Wrapping up

Pride Month is not yet over; we encourage you to take an interest in the organisations we mentioned in this blog post. Check out their websites and find out more about tolerance and acceptance. Let's give others space to develop and feel safe. This is what we want in our workplace so that everyone can work and grow freely and with a sense of acceptance and freedom!