As many of you know, this year marks the 4th Annual International Weight Stigma Conference. I started this event in 2013 on a shoestring not knowing if anyone in the UK even gave a damn about weight stigma. They do. There are a lot of us. And it’s an area that is being more widely recognised, not just here but all over the world. As the conference has become an annual event is has gotten bigger and (I hope) better. The only problem with a multiday event in a suitable venue, with workshops, international keynotes, and the whole shebang, is that it isn’t always as accessible as we’d like to make it for people on lower wages or with other difficulties, despite us running it as a not-for-profit.

Although we pursue external sponsorship, it is harder and harder to raise money for events like this – there’s no corporate profit in eliminating weight stigma. So this year we have launched a Go Fund Me campaign to try and raise money that will allow us to provide a number of small bursaries to make this event more true to its underlying social justice goal.

Whether you can be there or not this year, we would be grateful if you could spare even a few pounds/dollar to help us reach this goal. If we exceed our goal, any extra funds will go towards making next year’s conference more accessible. Please do share this call widely. Any help is very much appreciated.

The link to contribute is: https://www.gofundme.com/a9vht4jw

Finally, the conference wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our external sponsors over the last few years. Please do support them in return. You can see the current list of WSC 2016 sponsors at: http://stigmaconference.com/sponsors/ and previous years’  sponsors at: http://stigmaconference.com/previous-conferences/previous-sponsors/

Thank you all for your continued support of this event – it wouldn’t have become as successful as it has without you. Here’s to making it so successful that we don’t need it anymore!

Angela Meadows