Cork LGBTI+ Awareness Week & IDAHOBIT Day: Raising the Flag in Youghal
Today, Tuesday 13th May, the Progress Rainbow Flag was raised at Youghal Town Hall to mark Cork LGBTI+ Awareness Week and IDAHOBIT Day. The sun shone as Cllr. Mary Linehan-Foley, representing County Mayor, voiced the importance of local authority support for LGBTI+ people, their inclusion, visibility and equality. Thanking Youghal Municipal Council for their unwavering support, Cllr. Linehan-Foley stressed the importance of maintaining LGBTI+ visibility, making Youghal and its surrounds a welcoming and safe place for its LGBTI+ people.
The initiative was led by Cumann na Daoine through it’s Development Worker Hayley Fox-Roberts, who also manages the Seeding the County LGBTI+ development project, linking groups and actions across the county and administering the Cork County LGBTI+ Interagency Network (CCILN) and the event was attended by representatives of Youghal Municipal Council, Youghal Family Resource Initiative, Youghal Community Health Project, Youghal Library, Youghal Blue & Green Community Network, the East Cork Traveller Project, the East Cork LGBT+ Network, Youghal Pride, the Parents of LGBT+ Kids group and the LTI Community Development Course.
Speaking today, Hayley said: “We want to acknowledge the important role that Cork County Council and Youghal Municipal Council play in ensuring ongoing, proactive supports for LGBTI+ people, and thank the local authority for the financial support received by Seeding the County. Our flag flying on the Town Hall is an uplifting and meaningful sight, both for LGBTI+ people and for the wider community” She continued: “This event marks Cork LGBTI+ Awareness Week, with its 2025 theme of ‘Proud Allyship in Action’. Witnessing you who have come out to celebrate this with us shows that here we have that allyship most surely in action. The International Day Against Homo/Trans/Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) takes place on Saturday May 17th, and its 2025 theme of ‘the Power of Communities’ is reflected in what we see today and in the work each of us undertakes”.
For more information on Seeding the County, the East Cork LGBT+ Network or Youghal Pride, call 087 9890336 or email hayleycumannnadaoine@gmail.com
Photographs by Michael Hussey and Theo
Seeding the County April newsletter – events and opportunities!
Read it here: LGBT NEWSLETTER APRIL 25
Cork Gay Project monthly newsletter: read it here:
Gay Project Monthly Newsletter April 2025
Stepping OUT
Seminar for LGBTQIA+ People & Allies
In January 2025, Seeding the County held its second annual community seminar in Clonakilty, West Cork. The aim of these seminars is to afford LGBTQIA+ people space to network, to come together with community and allies, and to talk about the wants and needs of LGBTIA+ people across the county.
The location was chosen to emphasise the need for rural inclusion: Seeding the County’s remit is to increase supports, services and visibility for LGBTQIA+ people in rural areas of the county. As well as being a lovely and welcoming venue, O’Donovan’s Hotel has a bus stop outside the door as public transport is vital in connecting isolated community members.
The Stepping OUT seminar (originally to be held in November but postponed due to weather warning) provided a range of topics that referenced varying aspects of community life. Presenters from a number of organisations were delighted with the opportunity to spread the word on their current projects.
First up was Valerie Smith of the Irish Hospice Foundation, presenting the recently-launched EMBER LGBTI+ End of Life Guidance document. This was created by a working group which included IHF, LGBT Ireland, the Irish Association for Palliative Care, TENI, Trinity College, Queer Asian Pride, the All-Island Institute for Hospice and Palliative Care as well as LGBT+ activists including Cumann na Daoine’s Development Worker. This guide is a much-needed resource for the community, reflecting as it does the many challenges that may face LGBT+ people at the end of life. The Guide is an online document to enable future changes if required by legislative change.
You can access the EMBER guide here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEffR3mZCbeKjaRgIe21zooNmw5QosVL/view?usp=sharing
Our second session was an interactive workshop from Hayley of Cumann n Daoine on the topic of ‘Safe Spaces’. The aim of this discussion was to create a guide for use by organisations in the Cork County Interagency LGBT+ Network (CCILN), a network within the Seeding the County project, made up of NGOs, Youth & Health services and LGBT+ organisations. The commentary from this session will be presented to the CCILN for review and for use by members and other groups.
A networking lunch was followed by a session on ‘Resisting the Far Right’, delivered by Jack Casey of CATU, the Community Action Tenants Union. Lively discussion ensued, including the very valuable question ‘how do we define far right’? Useful approaches were aired and information on ACTU itself provided.
The final session was led by Jamie Furey of the Cork LGBT+ Archive. Along with explaining how the archive works, how it’s funded and where/how materials are stored, Jamie gave the welcome news that personal stories – our own oral histories – can be recorded and held in the archive.
Information documents we available, including two Cumann na Daoine reports – the Thriving Lives strategic plan for LGBTI+ Development in County Cork 2022-2027 and Building Blocks: A Toolkit for LGBTI+ Inclusion in Youth & Family Services. Both of these documents are available here:
You can view the presentations here:
CATU Resisting the Far Right Presentation (2)
Cork LGBT Archive Seeding the County
Video extracts from Valerie Smith’s EMBER presentation here:
This seminar is the second delivered by Seeding the County, with the first in 2023, again a successful event in terms of engagement and conversation. We will be planning the 2025 seminar, scheduled for September, in the coming months. The content will be informed by LGBTI+ voices, by Cumann na Daoine’s needs assessment of 2019 and the Strategic Plan itself.
When complete, the Safe Spaces guidelines will be made available on this page.
Please follow us on Facebook @Seeding the County Cork: you can email us at seedingthecounty@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you!
Read the Cummann na Daoine reports and guides here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQ3Lt63kfQDnOZHbE3ZKmEattpIVk1b-/view?usp=sharing
Building Blocks Guide
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ziKMGZ71NAAGrj68J90OCyE2uKzXRZvX/view?usp=sharing
Seeding the County Needs Assessment
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOSg5pN7kH8tCoBNlwEDCPWx6_2XCPmJ/view?usp=sharing
Thriving Lives Strategic Plan 2022-27