This week: Jess Woods, MBE, of LGBT Youth Project Allsorts

“I feel very honoured to receive such an award especially when I think of all the wonderful volunteers and workers in the community and voluntary sector in Brighton and Hove. I am only one of many people out there fighting for a better and more just society. What pleases me most is that an MBE for any LGBT individual tells us that the state recognises that the LGBT communities matter and need specific services which the state values and honours.”

Jess Wood, founder and director of ‘Allsorts’, the LGBT Youth Project based in Brighton, was awarded the MBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List, for services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans young people. Allsorts was set up in 1999, when Jess volunteered to be a mentor to young people in care. The project leapt in size in 2000, when the Diana Princess Of Wales Memorial Fund gave Allsorts a grant of £200,000 to develop services for isolated and vulnerable lesbian and gay young people. It is now one of the largest LGBT youth projects in the country. Leading this important part of our community, ‘Allsorts’ has just won the SE region in the national youth volunteering annual awards. For her exceptional work in this field Jess was included in the 2011 international list of ‘100 Women: The unseen powerful women who change the world’. www.allsortsyouth.org.uk