ALTON - Alton Pride, Inc. is a charitable and educational organization established to bring awareness, understanding, and advocacy to the LGBTQ+ community with an emphasis on the specific needs of the youth within the community.
In March, we announced that the Board of Directors decided to postpone our highly anticipated Fall Festival due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We reiterated that our mission is focused on helping our community.
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“We are setting ourselves apart from other Pride organizations by focusing on giving back to our community, rather than hosting just a parade or festival. We will be depositing a majority of event proceeds into structured account funding our goal to develop a local teen suicide prevention line and a teen resource center to help youth in need.”
During this difficult time, our Board of Directors has continued to hold meetings virtually while in quarantine to discuss our plan moving forward. With the decision to postpone our Fall Festival, we felt a need to restructure our board positions. Michael Paynic has decided to resign from his roll as President, however, he is still very involved with Alton Pride, Inc. We thank him for the countless hours he has devoted to this organization and getting us to where we are now.
With Michael’s resignation, the Board voted to appoint former Vice President, Nicci Kincer, as Alton Pride’s new President. Following that vote, Jason Heeren, was appointed as Vice President. Anne Hernandez McCoy is keeping her position as Secretary, thus creating our new Executive Board of Directors.
Moving forward, the Board will focus on community outreach opportunities. This will involve partnering with various charitable organizations, fundraising events, partnering with Gay Straight Alliance Clubs at local schools, developing a plan for our Youth Crisis Center in the future and more.
We are still planning on hosting a Pride Festival for 2021, however, we believe that our efforts to contribute back to the community is more important at this time. More information will be available throughout the following months, but you can keep up with our progress and events on Facebook.
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