Community Compass
Community Compass is a service of OITM. GLBT organizations from around the state are invited to provide brief — 200 words or less — descriptions of recent or upcoming activities and events. Send your submissions to us by email by the 15th of the month.
Mountain Pride Media Has New Grant, New Officers
Mountain Pride Media gratefully acknowledges the Samara Foundation of Vermont, which awarded us a $4,000 grant this year. We are honored by Samara’s ongoing support of Mountain Pride Media's mission and goals.
Mountain Pride Media thanks everyone at Burlington’s The Waiting Room restaurant who helped make our Second Annual Eat Out Event a huge success. Thanks also to everyone who stopped in to help support Mountain Pride Media. We are gearing up for our next fundraising event – The Barony Of All Vermont’s 2003 Adornment. This is a three-day event (August 8-10) being held at the Holiday Inn in Burlington, Vermont to benefit R.U.1.2? and Mountain Pride Media. For ticket and event info, please contact baronyofallvermont@yahoo.com. We hope to see you there.
Thanks to our volunteers and supporters who marched with us in the Pride March on June 14, and to everyone who stopped by our booth to say hello. We greatly appreciate the time people took to fill out our 2003 Readership Survey. If you didn’t get to our table at Pride this year you can still fill out the 2003 Readership Survey by visiting our web site and clicking on the Survey link. We really want to hear from the community – so go online, print out the survey, and mail it in by the end of July. Information from this year’s surveys will be used to help us make the transition to our new format, which will be unveiled with the August 2003 edition.
Please join us in welcoming the new officers of Mountain Pride Media: Dan Brink, President/Treasurer; Al Perkins, Vice President; James Garris, Secretary. We have an immediate need to find someone to join the Board to fill the position of Treasurer. If you are interested and have bookkeeping or accounting skills, please contact us at mpm@mountainpridemedia.org. We are saying goodbye and good luck to Board member Jack Ryniec who has moved to New Mexico, and extend our sincere thanks to Roland Palmer and Richard Slappey, whose terms ended in June, for their work as members of the Board for the past 4 years.
R.U.1.2? Picnic Celebrates Volunteers
R.U.1.2? relies on volunteers to get the job done here at the Community Center. In the last year, over 20 volunteer program leaders and over 100 individual volunteers gave of their time in support of the Queer Summits, Vermont Diversity Health Project, The Vermont Queer Archives, The Popular Education Initiative and our Coming Out Support Groups. R.U.1.2? volunteers had a strong presence in last month’s PRIDE celebration. Our float was prominent in the parade, accompanied by board members and coordinators of our programs marching alongside.
At the festival, we presented the new edition of Our Bodies, Our Minds, Your Guide to GLBT-Friendly Healthcare in Chittenden County. And all day, volunteers offered refreshments, conversation, and a break from the weather at our Open House in the R.U.1.2? Headquarters.
To celebrate and recognize everyone’s selfless efforts, we’re having a volunteer picnic. The picnic will be noon - 4 pm Saturday, July 26 at the Waterfront Picnic Shelter on Lake Champlain in Burlington. You can get to the shelter by walking north on the bike path through Waterfront Park to the Skate Park. The picnic shelter is next to the Coast Guard Building near the Skate Park. We’ll put up signs to direct you. It will be a time for you to relax, socialize, take in some sun and enjoy a good barbecue.
The picnic is potluck – people with last names A-L should bring a salad or side dish, people with last names beginning M-Z should bring a dessert. R.U.1.2? will provide burgers and dogs (both meat and veggie) and soda. This is a substance-free event. All volunteers and their families and friends are welcome to attend. If it’s raining we’ll gather at R.U.1.2? Headquarters (see our website at www.ru12.org). If you don’t currently volunteer at the center but are thinking of doing so, you are also invited! Come and meet current volunteers and learn how you can help out. We hope to see you there!
In one month, R.U.1.2? volunteers develop and plan programs, provide counseling, make calls, stuff envelopes, and generally donate hundreds of hours of time and energy. The work of the community center would not be possible if not for the tireless work of our volunteer corps. Committed citizens who are willing to give their skills and support are vital to any community organizing and development effort. Use this opportunity to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones and find out about the wide variety of programming you all make possible.
P.S. – Shhh! Don’t tell Khristian! This picnic will also be our time to honor the dedicated work of our Americorp/Vista Volunteer, Khristian Kemp-DeLisser. Khristian will be finishing his year of service in August, and we are grateful for everything he has done this year to make the pop-ed program successful and to create a safe and welcoming environment at the Center. You can also come and meet our brand new Americorp/Vista for 2004. Direct from San Francisco, California, Kelly Mulligan will be stepping into Khristian’s shoes on August 11th.