A leading LGBT charity has launched a new community space in Belfast city centre.
The Rainbow Project is bringing its support and advocacy services into the heart of the city's "LGBT quarter" with its new satellite office on Union Street.
It aims to provide additional space for counselling services which faced increased demand during Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.
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The charity also hopes to provide extra volunteering opportunities and boost awareness and accessibility of its services among the LGBT+ community.
John O'Doherty, director of the Rainbow Project, said: "The mission of the Rainbow Project is to promote the health and wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ people and their families.
"With this additional space we can provide more services, we can support more LGBTQIA+ people and their families on their journey to better health and wellbeing, particularly better mental health."
The new office space means the charity has a presence on Union Street where there are a number of LGBT bars and nightclubs.
"For us it's important to be part of the Queer quarter," Mr O'Doherty said.
"What we have here is an advertisement for the Rainbow Project and the services that we deliver right in the space where our community socialise and spend time with their friends and families.
"So it really is a shopfront advertisement to our community that the Rainbow Project is here to help and support them whenever they need it."
A launch event was held on Friday at the new office, which is already being used for the charity's counselling sessions.
Speaking at the grand opening, Mr O'Doherty said: "This new space that we've taken on has provided so much opportunity to provide more counselling services, more volunteering opportunities and more counselling space for our clients."
He added: "We saw a stark increase in the number of counselling clients during lockdown which made our waiting lists much longer than they had ever been before, but with this support and additional support, we've been able to reduce those waiting lists back down to pre-Covid levels."
The development of the new community space was supported by Allstate NI, Pinsent Masons and the Public Health Agency.
"We're so thankful to Allstate, to Pinsent Masons and PHA for the support they provided to enable us to have this space," Mr O'Doherty said.
"The amount of support that we've had from across the business sector, community voluntary sector and statutory sector has been really remarkable and I think it's a real indicator of the huge success that this space is going to be."
Mr O'Doherty said the office space is currently open Monday to Friday from 10am to 5pm, and he encouraged people to "call in at any time".
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