Blue Ridge Pride Center

Blue Ridge Pride festival-2022 was our first year back since covid hit, and it was our largest yet, with over 17,000 in attendance. We hosted over 200 vendor booths and 10 musical acts in pack square, asheville.

Brpc uses its funding to provide several programs that seek to serve the entire wnc region. Some highlights of each program's accomplishments are listed below: virtual center/pride portal- this was the second year for our Pride portal, and the first year we received funding a 13,500 strategic partnership grant from buncombe county helped us hire an admin support person in august to upkeep the virtual Center, and to contract out a web developer who helped us to update our website and migrate it to a more user-friendly platform. Business alliance-the business alliance entered an mou with the lgbtq+ chamber of commerce to cohost and cross-promote events and programs. Due to staff capacity, not much was accomplished through this mou. Oral history project-as strong as ever, our oral history project continued to interview local lgbtq+ individuals and upload them to uncas system, which is connected via our website. In 2022, we produced an intro video on youtube for interested volunteers, interviewees and other community members. Gen plus-2022 was a huge year for genplus, as we received a 22,627 grant from buncombe county. We used these funds to hire a p/t coordinator who worked with aarp and the area agency on aging to produce monthly series, including connections, thrive lunch and learns and other socials such as our genplus dance and genplus picnic. Community partner fund-in 2022, we funded several community organizations at amounts of 1000 or less for events and special projects. Community partnerships: in 2022, we received a 5000 tipping point grant to partner with caring for children in marketing their foster parent trainings to lgbtq+ individuals. We did this via radio ads, flyers, and social media posts.