Spencer PRIDE kicked off its new Rural Pride initiative at Fort Wayne Pride on Saturday, July 24th. Members Josh, Amber, Jonathan, Jacob, Melissa, and Jerry all took the roadtrip to northeastern Indiana early that morning to participate in the event. In addition to selling our new limited edition “Rural Pride Rules” T-Shirts, we also distributed a variety of information about our Rural Pride plans for the remainder of 2010 and 2011.
We were absolutely thrilled by the support we received from the Fort Wayne community. Hundreds (at least) of people visited our booth and a significant amount of those people also signed up to receive our new quarterly e-newsletter which debuts in September. In addition to getting information out about Rural Pride, we also made several new contacts that will help us enrich our own event – the 2011 Spencer PRIDE Festival – with new vendors and sponsors.
The Rural Pride initiative is a project designed to reach further into rural communities in order to spread awareness of the LGBTQI community. It involves educating these communities by involvement in county fairs (we’ve already assisted Positive Link at both the Owen and Monroe County Fairs), local festivals, and through other efforts such as a film screening (with partner White River Valley PFLAG), etc. Our Rural Pride tagline is: “It’s not the size of the community that counts, but what you can do with it.” Stay tuned for more news about Rural Pride.
Making the trip to Fort Wayne was valuable – but not cheap! Our membership made several donations in order to make the event possible. We plan to attend OutFest ’10 in Lafayette this month. If you can afford to do so, please consider making a donation to make OutFest a success for Spencer PRIDE. We will need to purchase a pop-up tent from Walmart (approximate cost: $106.00) as well as pay for transportation costs (gas $$). We have already paid for our booth reservation and all of the other costs associated with the event (since we had to get things ready for Fort Wayne). Don’t worry – members who attend are required to pay for their own food and other associated costs. We are just looking for donations that enables us to have a presence at this event. OutFest will probably be our last opportunity during the 2010 Pride Season to network at other Indiana pride events. To make donation, please send a check to: Spencer PRIDE, Inc., P.O. Box 585, Spencer, IN 47460. Your donations are appreciated.