TurnOut Visits Gay Days Anaheim
Orange County & San Diego Programs Associate Rowan Hepps Keeney at TurnOut’s booth
Our expansion into Southern California is off to a rollicking start. In addition to our outreach to new community partners, we’re beginning volunteer recruitment efforts, including a recent stop at Gay Days Anaheim at Disneyland (the sister event to Orlando’s well-known Gay Days at Disney World).
What started out in 1998 as a small one-day gathering of LGBTQ people at Disneyland has grown into a gathering of more than 30,000 people each year. It’s not officially sponsored by the park, but Gay Days is more than a meetup: it’s a full weekend of events, including parties, scavenger hunts, and this year, performances by actress and singer Audra McDonald, and Ru Paul’s Drag Race stars Jackie Cox and Nina West.
TurnOut joined the Orange County LGBTQ Center, Orange County Pride, and many others at the Gay Days Welcome Center.
Our San Diego & Orange County Programs Associate Rowan Hepps Keeney spent the day recruiting new volunteers and sharing TurnOut’s work. We asked Rowan about their conversations with attendees. “It was our biggest event in SoCal yet. Aside from sharing info about volunteer opportunities, our emails also serve as an opportunity for people to connect to a local LGBT community, whether or not they’re actually volunteering. We met folks who weren’t necessarily enthusiastic about volunteering - until they heard about our weekly e-blast.”
Most small organizations, Rowan notes, only have capacity for a few volunteer opportunities per month or per year. Through our community partnerships, TurnOut is able to bring together many opportunities in one place. “This bolsters the infrastructure of organizations doing important work. People are really into the prospect of having one email that gives you a sense of everything happening in your area.”
As we embark on our goal of connecting 2,000 new volunteers with Southern California-based LGBTQ organizations, there’s a lot to look forward to. “I’m looking forward to connecting with folks who are looking to get more involved and be more engaged in issues that they’re passionate about, in a way that is less overwhelming and more accessible,” says Rowan.
In particular, they’re passionate about the opportunity to I’m most excited about raising awareness of the intersectional issues our LGBTQ communities face, like food insecurity and houselessness, and and raising the importance of queer history through connecting folks to organizations like the Lambda Archives in San Diego. “Volunteering is a part of our history and our future.”
Rowan with Drag Race super stars Jan and Jackie Cox 😍