Andrej Pišl

Natalie Washington

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Javier Pellon
EGLSF General Secretary: javier.pellon@eglsf.info

This year EGLSF members nominated five candidates for the EGLSF Advocacy Awards 2025. The awards are granted to two persons whose actions have been particularly important for the LGBTIQ+ Sports movement.

Winners were announced on 25th of July during EGLSF reception at EuroGames Lyon 2025 where 5 500 athletes are participating in the premier multi-sports event celebrating inclusion and diversity in sexual orientation, sex characteristics and gender identity in Europe.

This year's winners are:

Andrej Pišl, Director of Projects and Policy at EUSA, for his European wide outstanding work in LGBTIQ+ inclusion at EUSA, EGLSF, Out in Slovenija and other NGOs 

Natalie Washington, football player and activist, for her internationally impactful work on LGBTIQ+ inclusion work in sports and specifically football, and for being a role model for trans people in sports

 

Biographies of the winners

Andrej Pišl works as the Director of Projects and Policy at the European University Sports Association (EUSA) and the EUSA Institute, where he coordinates several social responsibility projects. His professional activities started in education and sport, but apart from university sport, he is also active in other organisations and projects focusing on volunteering, human rights, fair play, inclusion, diversity and safety in sports for all.
Andrej was one of the early supporters of Out in Slovenija when it was still a non-formal sports group in 2000, and has been one of the founders of the club in 2010, when the organisation was formalised as an NGO. He has been the chair of Out in Slovenija since its founding, while actively engaging young people in the organisation and its activities. He also regularly contributed to the development of human rights and wider LGBTIQ+ movement in Slovenia, being a board member of the DIH Association, which he later also presided for 11 years.
He came into contact with EGLSF in 2003, and the following year, he lead a team of 20+ participants to the EuroGames in Munich. He was a Board member of EGLSF in 2007 - 2013, and in 2014 he and his team hosted the EGLSF AGA and Building Bridges Conference in Ljubljana. He was nominated as an Honorary member of EGLSF in 2021.
Andrej was the initiator and project manager of several EU-funded projects, focusing on enhancing accessibility and inclusion in sport for LGBTIQ+ groups and individuals. Some of them he ran also on behalf of EGLSF.

Natalie Washington is a football player and activist. She has played for Rushmoor Community FC in the Southern Region Division 1 (tier 6) of women's football in England, and has also played for & captained TRUK United, a trans specific football team - taking part in the first game to feature a team of entirely trans women in the UK. She delivers training on trans inclusion to a range of audiences in the UK, from county football associations to national governing bodies of sport, and her work is hugely respected, both in the UK and further afield.

She has been volunteering for Pride Sports for almost 10 years alongside her day job, providing input on policy and practice focusing on trans inclusion. She is the Campaign Lead for the Football v Transphobia campaign, which started in 2019 as an offshoot of the Football v Homophobia campaign.  As an expert on the inclusion of trans people in sport, she speaks internationally - to governments, intergovernmental organisations, sports bodies, grassroots organisations and the media.

 

Congratulations to both for their incredible contributions! 

END.

NOTES TO EDITOR:

EGLSF Founded in 1989, The European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation (EGLSF) aims include
combatting against discrimination in sport on grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and sex characteristics and to stimulate integration in sport and emancipation of LGBTIQ+ athletes. The federation has a membership of over 150 European LGBTIQ+ sports clubs and
organisations representing the interests of more than 44,000 people.

EGLSF licenses and governs the organisation of EuroGames, the annual European
LGBTQI+ sport championships. The first ever Games took place in The Hague in 1992, and the most
recent in Lyon in July 2025 with 5,500 athletes taking part.

Advocacy Awards are granted yearly. For more information about the nomination process, see https://www.eglsf.info/news/eglsf-advocacy-awards/.