End of the Year Thanks!
Mike Doughty, December ‘24 Newsletter
With the holiday season here, I wanted to take a moment to look back at what the Center was able to do this year and thank all of the support we got at our events, the folks who invited us to do trainings and talks, and the participants at the Center-led groups.
This year we were able to grow and expand our two largest events – our Pride Prom and the Cortland Pride Festival. The Prom saw an increase of high school students that showed up with a wider range of towns that they were able to come from. I wanted to also give a special shout out to the Whitney Point GSA who was able to get bused up by their teacher! One barrier we are still working on reducing when it comes to our youth focused events is transportation, so people being able to use their resources like that are a huge bonus in getting youth to Center events!
Our second Cortland Pride Festival saw a huge increase in the amount of businesses that participated, the amount of attendees, and also what we were able to do. We had a costume contest with a prize, and three different free-entry giveaway baskets. I’m looking forward to how we can expand Pride again this summer, and I have a lot of new ideas from the Empire State of Pride Conference I attended last month to make the Cortland Pride Festival bigger and better.
The Center is also working on new ways to continue to grow going into 2025. We’re working on a new electronic system for signing in at Center events that will be coming soon. We’re also opened a wish list for folks that want to donate items to the Center, and we are searching for local grants so that we can update the tech options at the Center and provide more for the folks that come to us. We also received the next grant cycle reward from the NYSDOH, so the Center will continue to be here and funded for the next 5 years!
I hope everyone has a great holiday season and to keep an eye out for our groups, events, trainings, or when we are at other events tabling and offering pride swag.