2026 Shortlisted Nominee
Community Organisation Award: LGBT
African Rainbow Family (ARF) is the UK’s leading expert‑by‑lived‑experience grassroots charity advocating for the racial justice, human rights and wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ refugees and people seeking asylum of African heritage and the Global Majority. Founded in 2014, ARF provides psychotherapeutic peer support, counselling, advocacy, employability training, integration programmes and emergency subsistence assistance across Manchester, Birmingham, London, Leeds and beyond. Led by people with lived experience of persecution and displacement, ARF creates safe, trauma‑informed spaces while campaigning nationally for fairer asylum systems and protections. Since inception, ARF has supported over 600 individuals to secure refugee status and rebuild their lives with dignity, safety and confidence.