As I look out my window while writing this over snow covered roof tops under a grey sky, I am warmed by some of the excellent conversations I have had over the last several months as chair of OutSport Toronto. Weather is is with people from our own member organisations, or some of the people to which OutSport Toronto has been exposed that fall into our 'third-party stakeholder' group, we all seem to have a good common ground in terms of the value of sport in our broader communities, and a strong desire to promote sport across the board. As chair, it gives me great hope as we enter a new year that LGBT sport in the GTA will have great opportunities to participate and be even more viable than we may have had in the past.
Today, I and our Vice Chair Ken were fortunate to have lunch with Jeff Carmichael, Executive Director of the Toronto Sports Council (www.torontosportscouncil.ca), facilitated by Kristen Worley, who was one of our guest speakers at our Fall 2010 Scrum, and a key person for diversity and accessibility in the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry, and Recreation. OutSport Toronto has started to build bridges with these and other organisations as part of our mission around effective advocacy with our third-party stakeholders, and general promotion of sport within the broader LGBT communities. We are very optimistic that these relationships we are forging now will result in a wide variety of win-win situations down the line, and will be of significant benefit to our member organisations.
In line with that, we look forward to seeing as many member organisations participate in our Creating Vision and Values workshop on the 23rd of January as possible. Participation is open to all nominees and board members of member organisations. In addition, we have invited some of our third-party stakeholders to join us as well for this workshop. For member organisation participation, your nominee was eMailed information as to how to register. We ask you to register so we know approximate numbers. This will be a facilitated session. If you didn't receive information on how to register and would like to participate, please shawn.sheridan@OutSportToronto.org along with your role in your organisation, and I'll provide you with the registration link.
And so with that, I'd like to personally wish all of our member organisations, their boards, executives, collectives, and steering committees, and all their members a very successful and Happy New Year!
