A Walking Proud group of friends and volunteers are covering 200km of Greater Manchester for a five-week Salford Pride fundraiser.
The group of Connor James, Natalya Disley, Tom Dutton and Frazer MacDonald has already completed two of their five walks across different Greater Manchester trails. Their first one happened on April 12 covering more than 20km from Didsbury to Salford.
Connor, who is head of events at Salford Pride, said: “I underestimated how long 20km actually was, it was hard work but it’s really great to go out and be active.”
By knowing that their fundraising and efforts will help Salford Pride to continue engagement and highlight important discussions about intersectionality and diversity within the LGBT+ community, the team have kept motivated on their journeys.
With the amazing support of the public and community members, across two pages over £700 has already been raised for the Salford Pride fundraiser.
The team has been overwhelmed by this generosity as Connor said:
“We didn’t expect to have such a great interest, we originally only had £300 as a goal and then we got given $200 from an anonymous person which is crazy, it means so much, it’s great to know that the work we are doing does have an impact on people.”
With three more walks to go everyone is feeling confident to put another foot forward to continue raising funds for Salford Pride and are excited to host the Digital Diversity Festival.
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By setting up Enigma Events: MCR, the team are collaborating with Salford Pride and are set to continue their fundraising by hosting The Digital Diversity Festival which will be streamed across Facebook and Zoom from May 15-16, to mark International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.
Connor said: “We’ve been given some grants by Forever Manchester, Salford City Council and Salford CVS. The whole idea of raising the money was to put the event on, but now the money that we raise is going to go back into Salford Pride.”
There will be multiple events including a discussion panel, Salford City Radio takeover, a digital nightclub experience hosted by DJ Valentino and an amazing line up of LGBT+ talent including Juno Birch, Amrick Channa, HUSK and more.
Connor explained the vision behind the festival saying:
“I realised that there’s not a lot of representation for disabled people and I came across this down syndrome drag group and I thought that’s incredible, they must inspire so many disabled people who are LGBT.
“We want to show that Salford Pride is an inclusive place, absolutely everyone is welcome. It’s just to kind of show different people from the LGBT community who aren’t just the typical ones you expect to see.”
To help raise money for Salford Pride, you can donate to the Enigma Events:MCR JustGiving page here https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/enigma-events and to see updates and buy tickets for The Digital Diversity Festival you can visit
https://www.facebook.com/digitaldiversityfestival
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