Welcome!

A message from Bert Pearce, 2009 - 2010 WPI Board President:

Hi Everyone!

Welcome back and I hope the new year finds you doing well and being productive! A brisk and energizing February is here and that means Pride planning is in full swing. I have a few things that I want to share with everyone this month and a bit of a recap of the progress we have made. The steering committee has made several structural changes, made some big decisions about the festival, and set some important goals that you might be interested in.

First off, we have made some changes to our internal structure which you can find in our recently updated bylaws and standing rules downloadable right here on this site. Those, along with our minutes, can be located on the "Meeting Minutes & Bylaws" page. We have also changed our meeting location and meeting time beginning February 2010. We are now meeting at Hope Street Youth Development located at 1157 N. Piatt (Corner of 11th and Piatt) on Thursdays at 7PM. Check out the full list of our meeting dates on the calendar near the bottom of this page to plan your visit.

Second, we have made some big decisions for Pride 2010 this year. We are quite proud to announce that Pride will be at the Mid-America All-Indian Center! You can get more information from their website (www.theindiancenter.org) or even better yet, go visit the grounds and the museum! We are currently in the process of mapping out the layout of the festival and we have nearly settled on pricing for vendors and should be out before the end of the month.

Finally, we are still working on some important goals. We now have our Business Database up and running so keep an eye on that for businesses that are allied to our community and use the information there to keep our money circulating amongst those who support us! If you are a business owner or run an organization, please take the time to join and grow our community directory. As always, along with growing our database, we want to grow our membership. Please consider joining and voicing your opinion on our Steering Committee and getting involved with the ground work. I guarantee that your views and opinions are unique and the more views we have, the better we can serve the community together!

Thanks again for visiting the site and I hope to see everyone representing our community in every way we can. Please let us know what we can do to help you and help our whole community reach our highest potential!

The purpose of this study is to learn about the experiences of GLBT parents in relationship to legal parenting rights. We believe this research is important in advocating for parents to be fully recognized in their family role and to not be discriminated against in family concerns.

Participants must be 18 years or older, currently be in a relationship with the same-sex partner with whom they have planned and created a family, and have at least one child under the age of 18 living in their home. The study should take approximately 20 minutes to complete online and meets human subjects approval by our university Institutional Review Board (E10-43). If you're interested in participating in this study, please click on the link below.