June has been a busy month of celebration for INBA. Across the Inland Northwest, Pride parades, festivals, and community events have showcased the overwhelming amount of diversity and support in our region.

Coeur d’Alene Pride, June 6

Coeur d’Alene celebrated its first Pride festival at G.O Phippeny Park on Saturday, June 6th thanks to the hard work of PFLAG Coeur d’Alene‘s Julie Stratton for organizing the event. INBA had one of about fifteen booths at the park, all representing local businesses and organizations supporting LGBT opinions, workplace rights, and regional diversity.

Spokane Pride Parade & Rainbow Festival, June 13

Spokane’s 24th Pride Parade was naturally larger and more exciting than any year before. With perfect weather for enjoying a day in the park and plenty of entertainment, Spokane’s LGBTAQ community showed up in full force.

Organized and sponsored by OutSpokane, the Pride Parade had the largest number of entries to date featuring numerous LGBTA community groups,  floats, a marching band, extravagantly decorated cars. After a three year absence, INBA had a solid group of members marching behind the INBA banner, as well as representation from Thinking Cap Communications & Design as the parade’s Business Grand Marshal.

Parade participants soon joined the Rainbow Festival at Riverfront Park’s Gondola Meadows which also had the largest number of booths to date. The INBA Business Center proudly sponsored by STCU was set up again this year to hand out business directories and created Pride Names stickers with the help of STCU. Pride goers were entertained at the main stage with live music,  learn about local LGBT friendly  businesses and non-profits, hang out with friends, show off their outfits and face paint, and mostly just to have a great day in a welcoming and definitely friendly environment.

Click to see highlights from Spokane’s Pride Festival at INBA’s Facebook page.

INBA Outreach benefit performance at the Modern Theater

The ensemble for the current show at The Modern Theater credited INBA Outreach’s audience as one of the most responsive and energetic they have performed to. Despite a small turnout, the cast put on an intense and heartfelt performance of Neil Labute’s Reasons to be Happy. INBA Outreach scheduled the fundraiser as part of it’s goal to reach $3,000 towards scholarship funds for local LGBT students.

Carver, a previous scholarship recipient attended Wednesday night’s event and spoke about how the INBA Outreach scholarship changed her life. The opportunity to continue her education, Carver said, was never an option until INBA Outreach got involved. 2015’s scholarship recipient, Tito Ellis, was unable to attend the event as he was taking his accounting final- a pretty good reason, in our opinion.

Mid-Columbia Pride, June 20

INBA staff Sierra VanderHoogt, her girlfriend Katie, and Christopher Zilar headed down to the Tri-Cities to celebrate at the Mid-Columbia Pride Festival. Equipped with INBA business directories, the trio handed out 200 to festival attendees and answered even more questions. The crowd seemed excited that such a business directory existed and thanked INBA for the support and effort in putting together such a valuable resource. Participants that have been involved in previous Mid-Columbia Pride celebrations stated unanimously that this year’s was the best ever.