Progressive Pride Flag by Tomas Diniz Santos
DeLand Pride has made it their mission for eight years to nurture professional and personal relationships amongst LGBTQ+ members and allies. Now they are adding to that mission by taking their prideful impact beyond just the city of DeLand.
DeLand Pride is joining forces with its two sister prides in Volusia County, Lake Helen Pride and Daytona Pride, extending their impact past one city alone. The nonprofit is branding the new collaboration as Volusia Pride. With this approach, encompassing all three groups together, leaders of the nonprofits say the community in Volusia County will be able to find everything in one spot.
The rebranding’s purpose is to bring all the information together. So, for example if any members of the community try to look up their county’s pride website, they will not have to click on five or six different websites.
Over the past two years, the DeLand Pride community has grown immensely. Leaders of the sister prides and DeLand Pride strongly believe in the strength of numbers.
Heather McLean, Executive Director of DeLand Pride and the Vice President supporting their 501(c)3 nonprofit talks highly of the collaboration between the three cities.
“You need more volunteers to do more things, especially in geographically different areas. So, when folks from Lake Helen came up to us and said it was important to them that they have their own group. We helped them by having them under our umbrella,” says McLean.
McLean says there are many pros that come with collaborating amongst other like-minded communities.
“From a paperwork and kind of bureaucracy standpoint, it’s easier for these groups to do good work when we don’t have to do three times the amount of tax filings and that kind of thing,” says McLean.
Another plus this extension provides is more visibility when it comes to advocating at the county level.
“We’ve really expanded into a much bigger team. We now have co-chairs of our advocacy committee, which allows us to do more work on advocating for the community at the school board or county level,” says McLean.
Volusia Pride has many important things in the works and leaders of the nonprofit are excited for the future of this group. McLean says the organization is at the beginning stages of moving into a bigger space where they will be able to offer mental health counseling services for anyone in the community that needs it.
The team has already started some partnerships with licensed mental health counselors that will offer services directly through the organization. Another goal of this new location or bigger space is to have a chance for more family friendly events, such as a family movie night.
The message that DeLand Pride wants to get out into the community is that they are not changing, rather growing. The rebranding of Volusia Pride is simply to show strength in numbers.
Volusia Pride’s goal is for those already living in the county to find it as a community where they can always feel welcomed and celebrated for who they are.
You can find information on new events or resources provided at DeLandPride.org.
