Dear Pride PEI Membership,

The Pride PEI Board of Directors is reaching out to provide the membership with an update on the board and the upcoming 2022 Pride Festival.

Since taking over the organization's leadership on January 20th, 2022, there have been significant hurdles to overcome in terms of planning the festival. This ranges from wrapping up financials from the 2021-2022 fiscal year, being a new board with limited experience with planning the festival, and some changes in board structure. We recognize that as the leaders of this organization, we haven’t been as transparent with the community as is expected of us. Moving forward, we aim to correct this, and involve the community in our future decisions and plans. 

There have been a few resignations from the original elected board of directors. The current board is:

Chair - Lucky Fusca

Vice-Chair: Open / Unfulfilled

Secretary - Chantal Hayman

Treasurer - Laura MacDonald

Directors:

Jacob Sheffield

King Kxndi

Amirah Oyesegun

Fares Chehayeb

Recent resignations from the board have caused a capacity issue that has impacted our ability to schedule and plan a community Town Hall. As a result, we made the difficult decision to postpone the Town Hall, which allows our board more time to focus on the Festival itself. We will be prioritizing this after the festival is complete which we hope will take place at the end of August / early September, 2022. As it is outlined within the by-laws, one of the main purposes of our Town Hall is to create a space for Pride to be held accountable, for transparency, and for feedback from the community.

Tyler Murnaghan has been hired by Pride PEI as our Festival Director, made possible by the support of PEERS Alliance, and the Department of Fisheries. We are extremely grateful to Tyler for taking on this role, and are confident in his deep well of knowledge, and experience with Pride in the past, as well as his connections within the community at large.  Tyler will be involved with the planning and execution of the Town Hall. We are equally grateful to PEERS Alliance and the Department of Fisheries for their ongoing support of Pride PEI.

Six of nine board positions are currently filled. Chantal was appointed to the board as an interim Secretary to fill this empty seat and maintain the integrity and working capability of the board until the AGM this fall. With limited capacity, a decision was made to reach out to a few individuals to begin putting together a Festival Committee to support the board in planning and executing the 2022 pride festival. This is a small group of reliable and dedicated peers and mentors. 

We recognize that Pride is FOR the community, and also BY the community.  If you feel that you have a skill set and time to offer to support the plans for the 2022 festival, especially as they pertain to filling the role of Vice-Chair, Volunteer Coordination, Media Coordination, and Marketing, and/or any other skills you believe Pride PEI can benefit from, please send the board an email describing how you are able to offer support. A wider call for festival volunteers will be going out within the next couple of weeks. You can reach out to the board at board@pridepei.ca, we will do our best to get back to you in a timely manner.

With further regards to the festival, we are happy to announce that it IS happening. The festival will take place from July 16th  - 24th. Our signature events will be returning, and please mark your calendars for the Pride March, Pride in the Park, and Pride After Dark on July 23rd.

The board asks for your compassion, we recognize mistakes have been made but we truly are doing our best and have the best intentions in mind for the community. We are new, we are learning, and we are passionate about providing a wonderful 2022 Pride Festival for PEI’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

Sincerely,

Pride PEI Board of Directors