Building Safe Spaces for the LGBTQ+ Community with Cville Pride

October is LGBTQ+ History Month—a month dedicated to recognizing key moments in LGBTQ+ history and related civil rights movements. When LGBTQ+ History Month was first created in 1994 by the first openly gay Missouri high school history teacher, Rodney Wilson, it was named Lesbian and Gay History Month. The month of October was chosen to include the already established National Coming Out Day on October 11 and the anniversary of the first LGBT March on Washington in 1979 on October 14—and the second in 1987 on October 11. Today, LGBTQ+ History Month also includes Spirit Day and Solidarity Week.

In honor of this month, MACAA is partnering with Charlottesville Pride Community Network (Cville Pride) to become a safe-space trained organization. This month, every member of our team will complete the 90-minute training, and we have committed to including SafeCville’s safe-space training as part of our orientation process for all new staff members from now on.

As an agency, we hope to increase cultural sensitivity and encourage respect and empathy among our staff, in our programs and in our communities. By becoming a safe-space certified organization, we will be able to better support the LGBTQ+ community in need of our services, give the PRIDE community visibility in the areas we serve and collaborate with local partners for future PRIDE events.

For more information about this training and the resources available from SafeCville, click here. To learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion at MACAA, view our DEI chart of work.