Last fall a meeting was called by the Harcourt United Church’s LGBTQ Living the Welcome group to find out about what the needs of the LGBTQ community. They invited various organizations including:

-          Out on the Shelf Queer Library and Resource Section

-          Guelph Resource Centre for Gender Empowerment and Diversity

-          Speak OUT (University of Guelph)

-          OUTline Peer Crisis Line

-          AIDS Committee of Guelph/Wellington

-          Rainbow Chorus

-          Members of Harcourt’s LGBTQ Living the Welcome Committee

While many things were discussed at that meeting, there was one universally acknowledged need: some sort of website that could be used by various LGBTQ organizations (or service providers) in order to increase the awareness of each respective organization and their events, allow for “1-stop shopping” for anything queer-related in our community, increase education and awareness of LGBTQ health issues, provide a list of community links, and increase the overall visibility of the queer community and those that provide service to them.

B.J. Caldwell (Educator, AIDS Committee of Guelph) offered to put in a funding request to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC, his funder) to fund this community venture. The funding was approved in early January of 2009 with the understanding the website would be live by April 2009.

The website was created by Insight Studios, a local website software company and feedback on the website design was provided by a group of volunteers working on Qlinks.ca.

This website is not meant to be static. It is meant to grow and evolve. If you have any thoughts on Qlinks.ca or ways it can change or improve, let us know (editor@qlinks.ca)!

And who are ‘we’? Qlinks.ca is run by a group of volunteers under the coordination of the educator at the AIDS Committee of Guelph. If you are interested in getting involved, check out the Getting Involved link on the left-hand panel. We would love to work with you!

Organizations that provide service to LGBTQ people in our area can apply for “Community Partner” status. This allows a member (or two) from their organization training and access to be able to edit some of the content on the website including events, blogs, and their own organization’s page. It also allows the community partner to use the website software to organize super-easy online event registration, create polls to gather data, or advertise events, including large event advertising (banner ads) all free of charge!

If you are an organization/group who would like to request Community Partner status, please email: editor@qlinks.ca .