Trill Takes — Twin Cities Pride
This summer, our co-founding Trill team made a big move to Minneapolis to participate in Target Incubator.
We’re so glad to be apart of a cohort of such socially conscious, scrappy, and energized startup teams. We’ve been making amazing new connections and learning so much… but taking on a new city can be daunting at first, especially when you don’t know your way around. Lucky for us though the very first weekend of our stay here happen to be Twin Cities Pride!
So we embarked out of our apartments and drove through downtown Minneapolis (where there are way too many one way streets by the way); we headed towards Loring Park, the site of the Pride Festival. We explored a maze of colorful booths ranging from fortune 50 corporate sponsors to local school groups making change in their own communities with their hustle and passion.
We put together a roundup of our favorite new organizations we learned about at Pride. And were so inspired we wanted to share it with the world:
Unspoken Voices is a non-profit which uses their educational training courses and bandwidth for advocacy to give platforms and awareness to issues of sexual assault and violence.
ThinkSelf offers resources and support to Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing adults, with a focus also on the LGBTQ+ community, so that these individuals may have access to the same quality of life as their hearing peers.
Day One Services is a Crisis Line with a core mission of keeping all people safely protected.
Free Mom Hugs is an alliance of parents who recognize the importance of being allies to their children and encouraging other adults to take up the same mindset.
Transforming Families is a peer support group for transgender, non-binary, or questing youth and their families.
Hennepin County Library, the public library system committed to ensuring that all spaces promote diversity and inclusion with their educational efforts and beautiful pride displays in each library.
We left Pride with more stickers, wristbands, magnets, pins, and pamphlets than we knew what to do with. We had a stack of business cards from organizations that we wanted to learn more about, support, and collaborate with, and at first we were overwhelmed. But then we realized, too many business cards from people doing awesome things?- this is a good problem to have. This year, we have seen more support for Pride Month than we ever have before. And, while activism must extend beyond rainbow logos and hashtags, our stack of business cards reminded us of how many partners we have in our purpose to serve the LBGTQ+ community.
Whether or not you went to Pride, I hope you felt the spirit of this month and enjoyed us taking you through Twin Cities Pride along with us. I leave you with this: June is just a starting point. Our Trill challenge for you is to not let this month define or confine your Pride. Pride is not limited to a month. It is not restricted to a single parade or festival. Pride is a movement. It’s a choice to support love and kindness.
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