Diversity Role Models joins the Stonewall family to expand support for schools and young people across the UK.

London, United Kingdom, June 2, 2026

Diversity Role Models and Stonewall have today announced a new chapter in their shared commitment to tackling bullying and helping schools create environments where every young person feels valued, respected and able to thrive.

Under the new arrangement, Stonewall will support Diversity Role Models’ work as its sole member organisation, providing operational support, national infrastructure and additional resources to help extend Diversity Role Models’ educational programmes to more schools and young people across the UK.

Diversity Role Models will continue to operate under its own name, delivering the workshops, volunteer Role Model programme and educator training that schools across the country have come to trust over the past fifteen years. The programmes, the people and the approach that schools know will remain unchanged.

This new chapter will make it possible for Diversity Role Models to extend its reach significantly. With Stonewall’s operational backing and national infrastructure, Diversity Role Models will be able to take its programmes to more schools and school communities across the UK, including areas it has not yet been able to serve.

The two organisations are united by strongly shared values and a long track record of working at the intersection of education and equality. Diversity Role Models brings deep educational expertise, an established delivery model and a strong record of impact in schools. Stonewall brings national reach, operational infrastructure and the ability to support the next stage of Diversity Role Models’ growth. Together, the organisations share a common goal: reaching many more young people across the UK.

Simon Blake OBE, Chief Executive of Stonewall, served as Chair of Diversity Role Models over a decade ago, during the organisation’s early years, and has remained closely connected to its work ever since. That history speaks to the trust and shared purpose that underpin this partnership.

He said:

I have seen first-hand the extraordinary impact Diversity Role Models has had in schools and in the lives of young people. Diversity Role Models has spent fifteen years developing a genuinely human and evidence-based approach to tackling bullying and building empathy in schools. We are proud to bring Diversity Role Models into the Stonewall family and to help extend this important work to even more schools and young people across the UK.

For the schools, teachers and young people who know Diversity Role Models, this announcement represents continuity as much as it does growth. The same programmes, the same people and the same educational approach will continue. They will now do so with greater operational capacity and the support of one of the UK’s most respected LGBTQ+ organisations behind them.

Christopher Drennen, Chair of Diversity Role Models, said:

Diversity Role Models was founded on the belief that every young person deserves to grow up in a school where they feel safe, valued and able to be themselves. For fifteen years, our educators and volunteer Role Models have been making that real, one workshop, one story, one young person at a time. The evidence for what we do is clear, and the demand for our work continues to grow. Joining the Stonewall family gives us the operational strength, reach and support to build on that work and bring our programmes to even more young people and school communities in the years ahead.

Together, Diversity Role Models and Stonewall share a vision of schools across the UK where individual differences are understood and celebrated, where empathy is taught, where upstanders outnumber bystanders, and where every young person knows they belong.