52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality

#7 Create and publicize a calendar of local events

2/16/2006

Achieving our goal of transgender equality requires activism at the local, state and national levels. While NCTE focuses on federal policies, we strongly support and encourage the vital work of grassroots activists. Each week during 2006, we will feature an idea for action that you can take at a local level. Some will be challenging, some will be simple; all are effective ideas and we will include links, resources and thoughts to help you get started. Some are things you can do on your own, while others are ideas for local groups to work on. We hope that you will take on projects that spark your interest and that meet a need in your community as we work together for equality for all people.

#7 Create and publicize a calendar of local events and encourage people to
attend them

Ever feel frustrated when you just heard about a great event that happened last weekend? Wonder how newcomers could be better served in finding out about community happenings? Want to show community members, politicians, funders and others all of the things that are going on in your area? Heres a great way to get the word about events in your area:

Create a calendar of all the transgender related events happening in your local community. That makes it much easier for people to find all of the events that might interest or help them and builds a sense of unity among the different groups. Having this kind of information readily available makes things more convenient for everyone and provides newcomers with an easy way to get involved and informed.

If you organize a calendar on your webpage or your groups webpage, it also drives traffic to your site from people who might not have visited before. It can raise your groups profile in your local area and help you be seen as an organization that serves the community.

There are a number of software programs available that can help you build a calendar for either print or a webpage. Many of them are easy to use and may already be on your computer (check for calendar templates on your word processing, webpage or publishing software). Contact groups in your area and ask them to send you the dates of their meetings, social events and conferences, along with contact information and a link to their websites. Then put them together to form a community calendar.

To give you some ideas and get you started, here are a couple of examples of community groups that are doing this:

TransgenderMichigan, which has a calendar with many local events from a variety of groups

Transgender Crossroads, a regional calendar of events happening in the Midwest. TGCrossroads is a project of the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance (INTRAA).

Then encourage people you know to support the events in your community.

For other things you can do for transgender equality, visit the NCTE website at http://www.nctequality.org.