June was a busy month for Penny Lane’s LGBTQ+ Programs! With June being LGBTQ+ Pride Month, we had exciting events all month long; from Pride Resource Fairs, to the AV’s first Legacy Ball, to packing supplies and care packages for LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness!
Penny Lane’s LGBTQ+ Programs had resource tables at Pride events in Montebello, Lancaster, West Hollywood, La Puente, and Monterey Park, among others. We shared information about our support groups for LGBTQ+ youth and handed out our most popular items – buttons! From “Ally” to “Hearts, Not Parts” and “Ask me about my pronouns”, Penny Lane’s buttons are always a hot item.
The Antelope Valley held it’s First Annual “Legacy Ball AV”, and Penny Lane was a part of it. As featured in the shows “Legendary” and “Pose”, the Ballroom community has a rich history. In the early 1980’s, the LGBTQ+ community struggled with racism and segregation. People of color were not awarded the same privileges as their counterparts. Ballroom was created after numerous drag performers and transgender women did not win titles or grand prizes. These same women started the Ballroom community. With chosen family known as “Houses”, these LGBTQ+ contestants can win trophies, cash grand prizes, and status.
The investment company Houlihan Lokey has a heart for LGBTQ+ youth, and together with Penny Lane’s LGBTQ+ Programs, created a volunteer event where employees filled bags full of toiletry essentials for LGBTQ+ youth experiencing homelessness. At the same time, short films educating the group about the LGBTQ+ community played in the background – along with queer dance music! The event was so successful that we quickly ran out of supplies. Penny Lane’s TAY Drop-In Centers now have 400 of these toiletry bags to distribute to LGBTQ+ youth and others experiencing homelessness.
Penny Lane had a great Pride Month! Thank you all for your support and help making this the best Pride Month yet! HAPPY PRIDE!
Check out some more photos from Pride month below!
Penny Lane is committed to creating a quality learning experience for attendees of our conferences and trainings. Every year after the EDGY conference survey is distributed to attendees to evaluate their experience at the conference, including their opinions on the workshops and the keynotes. We have been doing this since 2015 through the Outcomes and Innovations department. The feedback from these evaluations are taken in to consideration when planning the next year’s conferences themes and speakers, so the input of attendees is very important to us.
Attendees are asked if they agree or disagree with these statements based on a scale of 0 to 5 (0 being the strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree). Since the inception of these surveys, the questions above have averaged a rating of at least 4.5 or better. The fact that these averages remain so high with the large number of people shows a continued successful engagement with the EDGY audience. In fact, all the questions highlighted above are up 0.1 point from last year also showing growth.
In addition to the questions above we allow space for feedback on such things as suggested topics for future conferences and how can we improve the conference. Penny Lane is committed to keeping track of feedback, not only for putting on a quality conference but to use real data from real people in our decision making about our conferences.
The Innovations and Outcomes team will see you at EDGY in 2024!
