Local LGBT Groups Collaborate to Aid Haiti Relief
Canvass For A Cause, a team of dedicated activists specializing in grassroots organizing, in collaboration with other local LGBT groups including Courage Campaign, Empowering Spirits Foundation and San Diego Equality Campaign, has forged an official partnership with the San Diego and Imperial Counties branch of the American Red Cross (SDARC) to help build support and raise desperately needed funds for disaster relief efforts currently underway in Haiti. On Tuesday, the island nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was virtually flattened by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake, leaving tens of thousands dead with many more severely injured or still unaccounted for.
This Sunday, January 17, Canvass For A Cause and its allied groups plan to hit the streets of San Diego to conduct face-to-face conversations with people about the disaster in Haiti and raise funds for relief efforts. Tres Watson, Executive Director of Canvass For A Cause indicates that 100% of all funds received during Sunday’s outreach will be donated directly to the Red Cross.
photo courtesy of haitixchange.com
Training for Sunday’s outreach is scheduled for 1PM that day at the corner of 6th and Upas Streets in Balboa Park. Volunteers interested in participating need only show up. Once training is complete, groups will head out into the field, returning at 5PM for dinner and a debriefing.
“We are pleased to be collaborating with Canvass for a Cause, the American Red Cross and numerous other organizations to offer some sort of relief to the tens of thousands now suffering in Haiti,” says A. Latham Staples, President and CEO of the Empowering Spirits Foundation. “As a LGBT service organization, this event speaks directly to our mission of reaching outside the LGBT community in order to give back to society and dispel the stereotypes many have of LGBT individuals. This event is a great way for the LGBT community to help the Haitians, while showing the rest of society that we, too, are responsible Americans.”
Currently, only one fundraising outreach effort is scheduled (Sunday,) although the coalition has been fielding requests from across the state to help organize events in other areas. “We are strategizing ways to help people outside of San Diego coordinate events using our model,” Watson writes in an email to GLTNewsNow. “We are also considering other events like this for the local Red Cross in the near future.” Watson further states, “we are very excited about our partnership with the American Red Cross being made official and feel it has the potential to create a long-term collaboration between the organization and our [LGBT] community.”
Tonight at 6:30PM, Canvass For A Cause and its allied organizations are hosting a Community Open House in their new coalition office space at 402 West Broadway in the Columbia district of Downtown San Diego. The coalition is trying to increase LGBT presence outside of the Hillcrest area and Watson feels that their new office location is a great step in that direction. Community members are invited to come, tour the new office space and learn more about what each cooperative coalition partner does. Wine, appetizers and light refreshments will be served.
Representatives from the American Red Cross of San Diego and Imperial Counties were contacted but unable to provide a direct quote by the time of this post. A press release received from the event’s organizer states that SDARC’s Manager of Development and Communications, Ellen Agey, expressed gratitude for the coalition’s “commitment to humanitarianism” and thanked them for reaching out to the Red Cross as a partner in the fundraising effort to provide relief to the victims in Haiti.
