API Equality-LA at SGV Lunar New Year Festival
As a part of our yearly Lunar New Year activities, API Equality LA participated in the San Gabriel Valley Lunar New Year Festival in Alhambra for a third year. Throughout the day, led by veteran volunteer Alan Chan who spent the whole day at the festival, a dozen volunteers talked to festival-goers about marriage equality and LGBT rights. With varying levels of Chinese-language ability and a willingness to "just do it!", volunteers gamely approached hundreds of people to engage in friendly conversations in English, Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese (even Spanish on occasion) about this issue and shared New Year well-wishes and chocolate-stuffed Year of the Tiger Red envelopes.
Among the crowd, we met a long-time couple happy to chat about their experiences and their passion about this issue, a program coordinator of a San Gabriel Valley High School Youth Summit eager to increase LGBT representation and visibility and many, many supporters eager to sign our support pledges. We were most excited to have two high school students who came and did outreach with us - for one of them, this was her second year out there with us! The times are quickly changing and these young, courageous volunteers were emblematic of that.
Special thanks go out to Mimi Saidane for her thorough efforts to recruit volunteers (even after the rain-out a week earlier) and to Andre Ting, who provided the Chinese newspaper article that was very well-received by monolingual Chinese-speaking community members Alhambra. And did we mention Alan Chan spent the whole day volunteering; he made sure everyone had nourishment, some training and the necessary materials throughout the day? Thank you, Alan, you set a new standard. Finally, a shout out and big props to all the other volunteers who joined us that day or helped make it happen: Glenn, Michael, Robin, Wilson, Linda, Kat, Steven, Ericson, Genevieve, Greg and William!
To join this fabulous team, join us at the Thai New Year Festival Outreach or come to the next Outreach and Recruitment Committee meeting the first Thursday of each month at 7p at KIWA. Next one's March 4 with a late cocktail hour! Contact us for more info!