Intercom is a lesbian gay bisexual and trans community resource in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset, providing help against homophobic and transphobic prejudice, crime and discrimination (including bullying, harassment, abuse, attacks, and threatening behaviour), helping to develop the LGB/T communities, providing professional training and consultancy, and working in partnership with local government, the police, health, etc.

New research into young LGB/T people's needs & local services

Between January and March 2008 Intercom has been researching the needs of young LGB/T people in Teignbridge, South Hams and West Devon. We'll be putting the report up on the web in the near future, so watch this space!

Launch of Young People's Survey (5 December 2007)

No-one present will forget the event we held yesterday, 4 December, to launch Intercom's new survey report Youth Views Devon. A young guest talked to us about her on-going experiences as an Out lesbian student in a Devon school. Everyone present was immensely moved. We all thanked her for what she said, and for simply being who she is. The new report itself makes fairly devastating reading, come to think of it---it is now available for download from our Resources page. We all came away invigorated, angry about the pitiful inadequacies of our school system, and fired with a new determination to make change happen. Watch this space.

LGB/T Footprints in the peninsula!

For information about our new Heritage Footprints project, have a look at our Heritage and History Month webpage. (November 2007)

Domestic Violence help in Cornwall

We are delighted to learn that Broken Rainbow Cornwall is now up and running again; congratulations and best wishes to Simon and all involved. Broken Rainbow Cornwall provides confidential skilled professional help for LGB/T people in Cornwall affected by abuse or violence within a same-sex relationship or within their family. Contact details are on our Outlinks and Other Helplines pages. (November 2007)

Partnership for Victims project

Thanks to a magnificent grant from the Home Office Victims of Crime Fund, we are starting a short-term but intensive project to strengthen the resources available for people affected by phobic (homophobic and transphobic) crime. For more information see our Partnership for Victims Project page. (October 2007)

New team member

We are delighted to welcome Shirley as the Trust's new Office Administrator. Shirley came into post on 1 October, and we can already sense the improvements in our efficiency spreading out through the different projects.

New Website: update

As far as we know, pages are now displaying correctly in Internet Explorer 6.0, and pages are now printing in a printer-friendly non-graphics version. If you have any problems using our website, please let us know!

In the first nine weeks the new website noted just under three hundred separate visitors a week (average). Our front page has a Google popularity ranking of 5/10, which is the same as Pink News, and a little less than Stonewall. Some of the most visited pages are: the Lynx South West community development project; resources; training; local policing; safety and crime; heritage; human rights; help and advocacy; and schools.

If you would like to link your website to one of our pages, you are welcome to contact us to get an appropriate Intercom logo to use as a link on your website.

Tenth Birthday!

On 8 August 2007 the Intercom Trust had its tenth anniversary. This is a proud milestone in our history. Thanks to all the Founders, the Trustees and all our other volunteers, our staff and our funders, all our supporters, service-users and contacts, and our colleagues in our partner-agencies over the years, for bringing us through to where we are now.

It's not going to be plain sailing into the future---let's not get carried away!---but hey, there have been many times when we thought we would never be able to keep the Trust and its good work afloat for ten years... but thanks to everybody, here we are. We'll be setting up some events and celebrations over the next few months.

Any of the following links will open our Breaking News page in a new window.

• New funding from the Home Office Victims of Crime Fund. August 2007
• Intercom's tenth anniversary. August 2007
• European Charter of Fundamental Rights. June 2007
• Intercom's new Heritage project. June 2007
• Goods and Services Regulations. June 2007
• Community Listening and Consultation. June 2007
• Safer Devon Partnership research. June 2007
• Young People: community safety research. June 2007
• New website! June 2007

The trial version of this new website was launched in June 2007. A new improved version went up in July.

We would like to thank our immensely hard-working and dedicated web design volunteer, who continues to work hard to make this new website as accessible as possible. He tells us that this latest version should be fully accessible to speaking software used by people with visual impairments, and to people who access it via mobile phones. It should also function correctly in all the main browsers.

If you have any problems using the website, please contact us.