Sumitomo Corporation participates in Tokyo Rainbow Pride 2024, its first-ever engagement in the event~Aiming to realize a society where everyone can be themselves~

Sumitomo Corporation (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director, President and Chief Executive Officer: Shingo Ueno) participated in Tokyo Rainbow Pride 2024, which took place in Shibuya, Tokyo, between April 19 and 21, 2024. Tokyo Rainbow Pride is organized every year to raise public awareness of issues related to LGBTQ+ and celebrate the diverse spectrum of sexuality and life. This year, the company became a sponsor of the event for the first time, running a booth while its employees and their family members and friends, totaling about 120 people, joined the parade.

The Sumitomo Corporation Group recognizes Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (“DE&I”) as “the core enabler for value creation, innovation and competitiveness” and aims to create an environment where individuals can achieve their full potential and continue creating new value regardless of their nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and any other attributes or conventional values.

Particularly for issues related to LGBTQ+, the company conducts educational activities, specifically providing in-house training to help each employee gain accurate knowledge about the issues and eliminate prejudice and discrimination against LGBTQ+, while implementing an array of measures to create an appropriate environment, such as developing guidelines, setting up a consultation desk, allowing the use of a name other than legal name, and expanding the scope of eligibility for application of employee benefit programs and personnel systems to include a same-sex partner. In recognition of these efforts, Sumitomo Corporation received the highest rating of Gold in PRIDE Index 2023, a program hosted by the Japanese voluntary association “work with Pride” evaluating workplace initiatives related to LGBTQ+.

Sumitomo Corporation sponsors and endorses the Tokyo Rainbow Pride initiative, which is committed to realizing a society where everyone can more fully be themselves. At the company’s booth, employees wore T-shirts bearing the corporate message “Enriching lives and the world” to convey the company’s determination to further enrich society and people’s lives around the world. At the booth, the company ran a program asking visitors to write what they expect from Sumitomo Corporation in order to create a world where everyone can be their true selves. It was a precious experience to encounter so much diversity, through communication with many visitors.