Record number of Amstelveen buildings dressed in rainbow colors for Coming Out Day

Amstelveen is full of color. The flags, banners and lighting on the buildings have the colors of the LGBTIQ+ movement: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.

This celebrates Coming Out Day. Every year on October 11, attention is paid to being open about sexual orientation or gender identity. The focus on this day is that everyone should be able to be themselves.

“It certainly does something to me,” says Nanda Lensing. She is a member of the queer community herself. “Everyone was so enthusiastic. I hear from many people that it does something to them. It’s not just some colors. Colleagues feel safe and accepted.”

As a senior manager at KPMG, she set up this initiative together with the police and the municipality. By immersing the city in the colors of the rainbow, the initiators hope that people will talk more and more openly about this theme. “I can be myself at work,” says Nanda. “But I want others to feel good too. This can be done by starting the conversation.”

“I notice that there is more open discussion about it within the police,” confirms Ton Louhenapessij, diversity manager at the national police. In 2020, he came up with the idea to light up four police stations. “We received an incredible amount of positive responses to that.” Some colleagues then dared to take the step to also come out in the workplace.

Some people are not open about their sexual preference or gender identity because they fear discrimination. “That’s not surprising,” he says. “Every day we deal with violence against people from the LGBTQ community. You see that it is getting worse and worse in the world. Some countries even impose the death penalty.”

The initiators see this action as a counter-narrative. Even though Amstelveen has never looked so colorful, they hope that next year even more companies will join and more people will talk openly with each other.