Pandora, the world’s largest jewellery brand, today announced it has donated £10,000 in support of LGBTQ+ charity, Stonewall’s, campaign to promote better inclusivity in sport. The donation will go towards combatting discrimination, education programmes and driving Stonewall’s iconic Rainbow Laces campaign which is backed by major and grassroots sports clubs up and down the country.
The donation comes on the back of Pandora’s sponsorship of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 in July, which became recognised as the biggest women’s European sporting event in history. As an extension to its involvement with the tournament, Pandora at the time also established a partnership with Capital Girls League (CGL) – the largest girls grassroots football league and community in London, to provide over 20 CGL teams with essential funding for everything from new kits, through to transport to and from matches.
Celebrating diversity and promoting inclusion are core to Pandora’s company values and a foundational element of its sustainable business strategy. Earlier this year, Pandora committed to ensuring that, by 2025, at least 30% of brand ambassadors in its global communication will come from underrepresented groups, and by the same year, 30% of its branding content budget will be spent with suppliers owned by women or underrepresented groups.
Pandora has also established a number of internal employee resource groups for its 26,000+ employees around the world, including a ‘Pride at Pandora’ network which supports the LGBTQ+ community and allies. One of the more recent initiatives launched by the network was the introduction of a new policy across Pandora’s UK&I stores, giving employees the choice to include their preferred pronouns on name badges and workplace profiles.
Rasmus Brix, Managing Director of Pandora UK&I, said: “Our purpose at Pandora is to give a voice to people’s loves – celebrating individuality and promoting inclusion are key to this mission. We’re really proud to support the important work Stonewall are doing to champion inclusion in sport and ensure everyone has equal opportunities both on and off the pitch.”
Nancy Kelley, CEO of Stonewall added: “We are incredibly grateful to Pandora for this generous donation to our work in promoting inclusion in sport. Our research shines a light on the transformative impact of iconic campaigns like Rainbow Laces. Over the last five years, the proportion of sport fans who think homophobic remarks in sport are acceptable has almost halved – from 25% in 2017 to 14% in 2022.
Despite this we must not be complacent and we must continue to fight for a world in which sport is for everyone, regardless of sexuality or gender identity.”
