Show your Pride: Become a volunteer

Halifax Pride is looking to make the 29th edition of their Pride festival bigger and better than ever, but needs the community’s help to make it happen.

This year, Halifax Pride is giving a face-lift to its volunteer and community outreach programs to enable more organizations to create programming during the Pride festival and encourage individuals to take on new leadership roles as team lead volunteers.

“This year, we’re revamping our volunteer program,” said Jason Vermes, volunteer coordinator with Halifax Pride.

“We really want to open the creation and the envisioning of the festival and get as many diverse voices as we possibly can to help us put this together.”

In past years, the board of directors has been responsible for building the festival programs, but this year, Halifax Pride is launching a team-lead strategy where people of the community will take ownership of a certain elements of the festival.

On Feb. 27, Halifax Pride is hosting a volunteer fair and community meeting at the Halifax North Memorial Public Library.

For example, one of the volunteer positions is a social media team lead, rather than have a member of the board of directors handle that aspect of the festival, Halifax Pride is looking for a volunteer to take ownership of all things social media.

“We’re looking for people who are passionate about the LGBTQ+ community, who want to be leaders in the community and really want to make a difference in the Halifax and more broadly, the Nova Scotia LGBTQ+ community.”

Vermes says team leads are responsible for a “major project,” but they have three or four months to prepare, so this isn’t a full-time job.

“We want people to put in as time and effort as they can reasonably afford to do.”

Vermes says he’s hoping to put team leads into areas where they have an existing set of skills. For example, he’d be looking for someone with an accessibility background to take ownership of a project focusing on making the festival more accessible for people with disabilities.

“We want to… ensure that every need is met and that the festival is as inclusive as we can possibly make it.”

The 2016 Halifax Pride Festival runs from July 14 to 24 and draws in more than 150,000 participants, making it Canada’s fourth largest pride festival.

For more information on how you can be a festival volunteer, visit halifaxpride.com.