Thanks! We couldn’t do it without you

By Lucy Webb, GMC Board President

Happy new year, everyone. For those of you who aren’t local, winter hit our area late and suddenly this year. This week, we had a wonderful event hosted by Vermont Performance Lab and Guilford Sound (including sharing Michelle Wood’s film “And Counting” and Lance Levesque’s new “Gay Hero Project”) to thank our donors and volunteers. I wanted to share some of the great stuff here that I shared with the hardy folks who were able to brave last Tuesday night’s weather to be there.

In 2015, we worked with 1,755 people at 82 different community events like monthly Trans Night, Friday Night Group, and Played Out! Game Night, and at first-time events like Earth Gay Vermont!, the Pride Family Picnic, and workshops about rural LGBTQ experiences at the Northeast LGBTQ College Conference and Transcending Boundaries Conference. We spent a day in collaboration with local midwife Fiddlehead Midwifery teaching future midwives how to provide the highest level of care to trans clients, and a whole day and night building a movement and community with folks from around the region through our very first Rural LGBTQ Futures Summit!

Our volunteers spent countless hours on Facebook re-posts, setting up for events, putting up flyers, facilitating groups, cleaning up after events, and myriad other things.
At the end of 2014, we had a single monthly sustaining donor who was giving $20 monthly. Today, we have 21 sustainers who are giving $367 each month. And in 2015, we had 230 individual donations in addition to the many dollars that come in anonymously at our events, for a total of $7,308.

I think the work we do — connecting rural LGBTQ people to build community, visibility, knowledge, and power — is both really important and really fun. I’m so, so grateful for all the folks whose time and resources make that possible. And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my deep gratitude for the rest of our hardworking board, Alex Fischer and Emily Marker, and our even harder-working executive director, HB Lozito.

Mostly, I just want to thank those folks. I’d also like to open a door for those of you who’d like to be part of our amazing network of people. If donating is your thing, the “Donate” button is easily accessed from this page. If you’d like to get involved as a volunteer, helping out with events, serving on committees, perhaps filling one of our open board slots… please touch base with HB.

Thanks again so much to everyone who’s already involved, as donor, volunteer, or both, for all you do for Green Mountain Crossroads. We absolutely couldn’t do this without all of you.