Listen to this articleHundreds of people marched in Provo in June, including BYU students, alumni, and professors. It started at Joaquin Park and ended at Kiwanis Park south of campus. Guest speakers addressed the crowd at the beginning of the event, including former Studio C cast member Stacey Harkey, and OUT Foundation member Emma Ramirez.
Campus Pride, a national nonprofit organization for student leaders and campus groups working to create a safer college environment for LGBTQ students, awarded ten Social Justice Mini-Grants for Activism Funding worth up to $600 each from the inaugural class of projects. The program was launched in June as part of the organization’s 20th-anniversary celebrations.
BYU Pride was one of the inaugural recipients. David Shill, president and founder of BYU Pride, said that the organization will use the grant to fund initiatives including monthly events, safe housing initiatives, pride marches, petitions, and community unification.
“BYU Pride has gained a lot of attention for having put on the first-ever pride march, so now we need to keep the momentum by planning large-scale community events,” Shill wrote in the application for the grant. “We have planned events and worked on various projects in the past without much funding that were widely successful and hope to scale up our events with this funding.”
BYU Pride’s mission statement is to “empower students to celebrate progress made by the LGBTQ+ community at BYU and to advocate for change through collaborative activism.”
The next event being held by BYU Pride is the RaYnbow Collective Back-to-School Pride night, which will present a Pride March at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 4, followed by live music, an art show, speeches, and food trucks through 7 pm at Kiwanis Park, 1019 N 1100 E, Provo. More information at info.byupride@gmail.com.
More information on BYU Pride is available at linktr.ee/byupride
