When he moved to Ireland ive years ago to be with his Irish partner, Jonathan Weir began volunteering with LGBT+ organisations so that he could become more involved with the community. This experience has led him to becoming the Ireland Country Manager with OUTstanding, a global membership organisation for businesses that strives for positive change in the workplace for LGBT+ people.

Photo by Babs Daly.

I am originally from the North West of England. I was born in Chester, which is a beautiful city, and grew up in a different town called Ellesmere Port. I moved to Dublin in 2013 and haven’t looked back since.

The main reason for the move was that my boyfriend, now my fiancé, is from Ireland originally and his work took him back home to Dublin. I was working in publishing at that point. I had been in my then job for nine or ten years at that stage, and it just seemed like a really great time to make the move.

Ireland was an interesting and different country to me, but not one where they didn’t speak English or the culture was alien. There were enough differences to make it a new, exciting adventure. That’s how I looked at it at the time.

One of the things I wanted to do was to get involved in the Irish LGBT+ community. I hadn’t had that much involvement in the UK community; I went out on the scene but that was probably the extent of it. So when I moved to Dublin I looked up voluntary organisations in the city.

One of the first organisations I came across was Gay Switchboard so I sent in an application to volunteer with them, firstly because of the work they do but also – and it sounds a bit selfish – I thought it was a really great opportunity to meet new people, to make new friends. I left most of my friends back in the UK. I knew a few people here, but they were all my boyfriend’s friends and I wanted to meet some of my own.

I wanted to make sure I had that connection to the community, and gay friends here as well. That’s always been really important to me. So I got involved in volunteering for the Switchboard and I’m still with them now.

In the Marriage Equality Referendum, British citizens couldn’t vote; but I felt so passionately and so strongly about it that I got involved in that. I volunteered on the Marriage Equality bus, which travelled around the country, going to all these towns in Ireland and meeting some really, really lovely people. It was a great experience. It taught me a lot about myself and about the perceived attitudes around a lot of issues, which just didn’t seem apparent to me.

People would ask me ‘Why are you bothering? You can’t vote.’ My feeling was if I could change one person’s ‘no’ into a ‘yes’, that might be the difference between it going through and not going through. They might talk to somebody else and turn another ‘no’ into a ‘yes’. That was the way I looked at it.

I was just a tiny, tiny cog in a massive wheel with cogs that had been turning for years, so it was a privilege to be among those people who had worked hard and been passionate for so many years, and seeing it come into fruition was fantastic. Being around all those smart, energised people was a real thrill.

When I came to Ireland thought I’d keep doing the same thing I was doing in the UK. When I couldn’t, I found myself trying to think, ‘okay, if I can’t do exactly what I did in London, what is it I want to do?’ I knew I really wanted to do something around LGBT issues. Then a job came up in OUTstanding, which similar to work that I’d been doing previously – there was a lot around managing relationships and building relationships, but also tied up a lot in how passionate I feel about LGBT people feeling included and not excluded, especially in the workplace. So it was a great opportunity.

I think the key thing is that we aren’t GLEN. OUTstanding aren’t trying to step into the shoes of GLEN who, obviously, were an incredible organisation who did a lot for the LGBT community, across many strands of business. We aren’t trying to replicate that; but yes, there are some similarities in the work that we do around LGBT inclusion in the workplace.

People might think ‘he’s the Country Manager for Ireland and he’s not even Irish’, but I’ve lived here for nearly five years. I’m marrying an Irish man and I’m heavily involved in the LGBT community here. Hopefully that lends a little more authenticity to my voice and my role for people who might be expecting somebody who’s actually Irish!

To find out more about OUTstanding, visit www.out-standing.org