5th Annual Afternoon for Equality Recap

The Greater Erie Alliance for Equality, Inc. (GEAE) would like to thank those who helped make its fifth annual Afternoon for Equality social and fundraiser the most successful one to date. On July 19th, Erie community members gathered at 21 La Rue Dix to celebrate this year's advances and advocates for the LGBTQ community from the historic SCOTUS decision on marriage equality in June to the local trans-youth that have emerged as their own advocates in area schools. This year, GEAE was proud to present the first local LGBT Community Progress Awards to two long-standing corporate allies: GE Transportation and Erie Insurance. At the event, GEAE Board President, Will Koehler, presented GEAE's 5-year vision to work with local allies in order to increase Erie's Municipal Equality Index (MEI) from its current rating of 57/100 to 100/100 by 2020 (Human Rights Campaign, 2014). His address highlighted the first phase of this vision which is to conduct a multi-phase LGBT community needs assessment. This assessment includes working with NWPA Pride Alliance to form a community roundtable discussion group and working with Edinboro University's Social Work Department to conduct a needs assessment survey. Over 80 people participated in the Afternoon including State Representative Ryan Bizzaro, City Council Member Bob Merski, and founding Board member, Bob Howden. We are grateful to this year's Hosts, Friends, Partners, and Equality Advocates that enabled us to raise over $10,000 towards our efforts to improve Erie's MEI! We look forward to working with these resources to complete our needs assessment, offer quality educational programing such as the 2nd Biennial Intersections of Equality on November 7th, and other service opportunities and social events throughout the remainder of 2015 and beyond. Please visit our website GreaterErieAlliance.org to take our survey, learn more about us, and to donate to our 2020 vision.

Photos

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