In today’s new reality, mental health has never been more a topic we all are talking about more and more. With posts recently like How The Epidemic Is Forcing LGBTQ+ College Students Back Into The Closet and today’s On The Track To Get All I Ever Wanted, To Be Loved And To Have That “White Picket Fence”, we know that some people that had never dealt with mental health issues before are finding themselves battling a new fight and those that were managing/understanding that their mental health was already different than others are finding their challenge compounded.
For the LGBTQ community, this isolation we’re all experiencing imposes an exponentially more severe mental burden. With May being Mental Health Awareness Month, leading spa and beauty brand, Bliss, has announced its philanthropic partnership with The Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, to support the community as COVID-19 continues to take an extreme toll on mental health.
Since the pandemic began, Trevor’s Lifeline saw its highest call volume in its history, with double the number of calls. On top of this, Pride events, which non-profits like The Trevor Project rely on to fund their life-saving resources, were just cancelled. So, Bliss is stepping in, and kicking off their planned partnership early to help show LGBTQ youth that they are not alone.
And we’ve wondered about this for some time on our conference calls. With one of our posts in April, Pride Is Nationally Canceled – Does This Mean Companies & Communities Will Be Less Prideful In June?, we basically asked if companies will come forth and support the LGBTQ community, even though they don’t have the ability to splatter their rainbow-ified company logo all over our parades, businesses, and clothes. So thank you Bliss for helping our community out!
But how is the spa and beauty brand going to pitch in? Here’s the rundown of the Mental Health Awareness Month campaign:
- THE DONATION MATCH – The Trevor Project announced that there will be a donor match campaign in which Bliss will double all donations up to $50,000. These funds will directly support Trevor’s suicide and mental health resources like the Lifeline hotline, peer support community TrevorSpace, trained crisis service counselors, and more, which are all being relied on now more than ever. The donation page can be found at TRVR.org/GiveWithBliss.
- THE TELETHON – Hosted by industry veteran and LGBTQ advocate, Phillip Picardi, with support from co-host Manny MUA plus guests including Nikita Dragun and Angel Merino (@mac_daddyy), the “Live for Lives” Telethon fundraiser went live on Instagram today, Frida May 1st, at 12pm PT/3pm ET, with the goal of bringing awareness to the cause and the community, driving donations, and simply sharing some good news and positivity. See the Telethon flyer below.
As of this story going live, the donations were about $42,000 and doubled to a fun total of about $84,000, so there is still time to donate and have that donation matched.
Once again, the donation page can be found at TRVR.org/GiveWithBliss.
