Trade Sexual Health

Who we are

Our Mission: Trade provides high quality, health and wellbeing services to the LGBTQ+ community and  people living with HIV (PLHIV)

Our Vision: LGBTQ+ identity and/or HIV status will no longer be a source of health inequality or a barrier to wellbeing

Trade began, in the late 1980s, as an informal gay community response to HIV in Leicester. We have been

a registered charity since 2000. Sexual health and HIV prevention has always been our core work, but we

have never been limited by this focus. Over the last two years, we have responded to the changing

composition of our service users and their needs, consciously evolving into a broader health and wellbeing

charity for the whole LGBTQ+ community.

In addition to the delivery of health services to the LGBTQ+ community, we work to support individual and

community health empowerment – through our counselling service, our support groups, and volunteer peer

educators. We believe that a stronger, better-connected LGBTQ+ community locally is essential to helping

individuals feel that they belong and are valued.So, we actively engage in community building activities.

Finally, we engage in advocacy and lobbying to ensure local health and other statutory services better meet

the needs of the LGBTQ+ community and PLHIV, to minimize the barriers to them accessing high quality

healthcare and address wider social issues that impact on their wellbeing. Without our work, the LGBTQ+

community in Leicester would experience worse health inequalities, poorer health and wellbeing, and

greater social isolation.

Our culture and values

Our Values

Compassionate

We take care of our staff, volunteers and service users. We meet people where they are at (in terms of their physical and mental health, and how they identify) and design how we work to be welcoming, so that people are valued and have their needs met.

Community-led

We value the experience, passion and knowledge of our communities which informs how, where and when we deliver services. We respond to the changing needs of our communities and provide creative solutions to meet them.

Authenticity

Everything we do is authentically and visibly queer. We create safe and radically inclusive services that meet the needs of the full range of the LGBTQ+ and HIV communities.

Courageous

We push boundaries of what safe spaces look like and lobby mainstream services to go beyond rainbow flags and performative allyship

Affirming

We are radically inclusive. We model and lobby for services and support that meet the needs of the full diversity of the communities we serve