As we reflect on our impact in 2025, we are proud to see that Micro Rainbow’s holistic approach to integrating LGBTQI individuals continues change the lives of people in our community.
Advocacy
Micro Rainbow’s dedicated outreach team supports LGBTQI people fleeing persecution by advocating for their rights and needs, including access to healthcare, safe housing, and legal aid. Outreach Officers not only provide advice and practical support, but also work to empower beneficiaries to access services independently.
In 2025, Micro Rainbow’s eight Outreach Officers, six based in England and two in Wales, provided intensive one-to-one casework support to 819 LGBTQI people fleeing persecution. In addition, Micro Rainbow employs a dedicated LBTQI Women’s Officer to meet the specific needs of LBTQI women seeking asylum. 2025 was another record year for Micro Rainbow in terms of the number of people supported.
Information about our community in 2025:
Housing
At Micro Rainbow, providing safe housing for LGBTQI asylum seekers is central to our mission. Through the safe housing programme, we aim to combat homelessness and reduce the violence and harassment that LGBTQI migrants often face in housing situations.
We achieve this by directly offering housing and collaborating with hosting schemes when we reach full capacity. In 2025, we proudly expanded our efforts by opening five additional safe houses, and moved into two brand new areas of the UK.
The five additional houses increased our housing capacity by 17%, enabling Micro Rainbow to provide over 41,975 safe bed nights annually. This expansion allows us to support even more vulnerable LGBTQI asylum seekers with inclusive, safe, and welcoming housing.
Social inclusion
While providing safe housing for LGBTQI asylum seekers is essential, it is only one part of their integration journey. Through the Social Inclusion programme, Micro Rainbow promotes social justice and fosters a sense of belonging, confidence, and self-esteem among LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees.
Over 2025, Micro Rainbow delivered 125 events, incorporating a wide range of activities. Our community of LGBTQI refugees and asylum seekers were able to attend theatre trips, visits to museums and farms, and early in 2025 the Sista Sista group attended the Women’s March.
In response to the marked increase in hostility towards refugees and people seeking asylum, the Social Inclusion team delivered emergency online check-in sessions to offer a supportive space to those affected by anti-asylum protests and events in the UK. These sessions have been crucial for our community and ensured that people have access to support during a difficult time. 124 unique beneficiaries have attended these online events since they began in August 2025.
In 2025, the support and community offered by the Social Inclusion programme has been more critical than ever. This programme builds a different type of home, the one that a community creates, which is essential to our sense of belonging and integration.
Moving on
The Moving On programme offers tailored support to refugees in improving their employability skills, accessing education and permanent housing. The long-term goal of this programme is economic empowerment of LGBTQI refugees leading to people taking back control of their lives.
In 2025 the Moving On programme held 24 workshops, which were delivered in partnership with corporate partners. These workshops were attended by 160 people in our community. The workshop programme for 2025 was diverse, and included CV writing, job search skills, hospitality skills, budgeting for a new life in the UK, communication and interviewing skills and much more.
The Moving On programme also provided one-to-one support to people who received their status during the year, to help the transition from asylum seeker to refugee. This support also included mentoring and employability advice.
In autumn 2025, Micro Rainbow launched the Leadership Group Coaching programme for LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees. Led by two experienced coaches, including Micro Rainbow founder and CEO Sebastian Rocca, this programme delivered group coaching sessions, alongside individual tailored coaching for eight participants. Over the course of the three-month programme, participants explored and grew their leadership potential, built their confidence and networks and learned new valuable new skills.
Increased capacity, more demand
2025 saw Micro Rainbow continue to expand the support offered to LGBTQI people fleeing persecution. We welcomed four new members of staff in 2025, which allowed us to offer more regular and varied in-person events in 2025 – especially in the West Midlands. New resources meant we could take part in Birmingham Pride for the first time with our West Midlands community members. Increased staffing numbers has also allowed Micro Rainbow to offer a broader range of support in 2025, including increased advocacy support to those in need.
We are also very proud to have released our short film Who’s There? which premiered at Mighty Hoopla festival in June 2025.
2026 and beyond
2026 looks to be another challenging year for Micro Rainbow, as the political and social climate continues to be hostile towards refugees and people seeking asylum, and the LGBTQI community in general. Similarly to previous years, our safe housing provision continues to be impacted by both high energy costs and high inflation. But our remit remains the same, and we will endeavour to support and empower our community in every way we can.
2025 saw Micro Rainbow launch a range of CPD-accredited courses that empower teams to work more effectively with LGBTQI people fleeing persecution. We are continuing to offer these courses in 2026 – check out our training page or email training@microrainbow.org to book.
Whichever way you have supported Micro Rainbow in 2025 or choose to support our work in 2026, we want to say thank you. Your support of our work are instrumental in changing many LGBTQI people’s lives. Our joint contribution is testament that social change is action and is possible.
