Family Week Slides and Planning Starts for Family Week 2008!
Dustin on Aug 17th 2007
This year’s Family Week was my second as a member of the Family Pride Team (this year dubbed “Team Family Equality” on our bright orange t-shirts). It was a thrilling experience to be back—better prepared to navigate Provincetown, happy to speak with LGBTQ family friends I made last year and meet new folks this time around. I was especially excited to have much more time to plan and prepare for our educational workshop series—to have time before and afterwards to sit and talk at length with families who had issues, ideas, questions, and concerns to share. Last year, when Family Pride produced Family Week entirely on its own (with COLAGE providing programming and events for youth), just as soon as I or any other Family Pride staff member finished a talk or presentation we had to zip off to some other location—the beach, the pier, a hardware store, a copy shop two towns over! Anyone who’s involved in Family Week planning and execution—be they Family Pride, COLAGE, R Family Vacations or otherwise affiliated—can tell you that it’s an uncanny combination of dedication to our families and adrenaline/caffeine cocktails that make this week happen. As hard as we sweat, as little as we sleep, there’s nothing more satisfying than connecting with our families face-to-face and providing them with an amazing opportunity to connect and grow.
Longtime Family Weekers have noticed many additions over the years—almost all of which have been tied to the astounding growth of the event from year to year. There are larger events, more partners, and more amenities geared towards families in the town. We estimate more than 600 families attended Family Week this year. That’s a tremendous increase from the 15 or so families that first gathered just 12 years ago! And with that growth comes change.
We have heard your initial feedback from Family Week 2007, and we look forward to hearing more. Feedback is essential to building better programs and activities for our families, and we are dedicated to incorporating as much as of it as possible into our planning for next year. Family Week 2008 is already in the works. We thank you for taking the time to let us know how much you care about this very special week for our families.
In the meantime, in those twelve long months between one Family Week and the next, we invite you to connect with Family Pride in all the other work that we do—advocating for our families through our policy initiatives; activating parents in their local communities through OUTSpoken Families; growing communities through our work with local parents groups; building safer and more inclusive schools for our children; increasing the visibility of our families through local and national media; and providing the best, most up-to-date and accurate research about our families experiences to the world.
Thanks again and I look forward to my third Family Week next August!
Filed in family week, general, r family vacations, staff |
What are the dates for Family Week 2008?
I hope next year R Family will not be part of the team. They really blew it this year and overcharged and under delievered on what they promised.
Why not get a volunteer team of parents to plan the 2008 social events?
I understand how can you make mistakes the first year. However the attitude and blame that the R Family team gave was unexcusable. I understand they are big donors to Family Pride - but that does not mean they should have the contract to rip off gay families who work hard all year to come to Family Week as their one big yearly vacation. I felt ripped off and then they gave me attitude when I complained.
Here are some more family week photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sfphotocraft/1134672516/
Our 12 year old son also did his collage of the pictures he took during the 2007 family week. Here is his creation:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/patbreana/1133044866/in/pool-42641762@N00
Jeff Wikepedia is showing the 2008 Family Week dates as: Aug 2 - 9, 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Pride
Family week was great except when my family was ripped of by rfamily’s supposed circus….We spent $180 for a circus and dinner. What we ended up with was food that was cold, gross and the kids wouldn’t even eat it. A few people dressed up handing put chips does not constitute as a circus to me. I know that there are many families also upset by this, and we were encouraged to e-mail Gregg, well I did and he doesn’t seem to care, not a thing back from him, and that was about 2 weeks ago. I am very disapointed by rfamily’s involvement with Family week, and I will never spend another penny on anything of theirs.
I agree, we spent a lot of money at 3 events - Broadway Brunch, Circus and Hawaiian night. I just assumed all would have a nice meal and some type of entertainment for the price that was charged. I was really shocked when the food were things like corn dogs or in one case food that was gone in five minutes.
The entertainment factor just didn’t exsist at all.
My expierence was similar when I tried to talk to Greg and Kelly at the event, I was given the brush off and told to write a letter. Well it’s been three weeks and nobody from R Family has given me the time of day! Why should they? They have my money!
We love family week and we will be back in 2008. I hope Family Pride makes a business decsion and cuts it’s ties with R Family. Our family for one will not buy another product from them!
Family Pride and Colage, please keep up the good work. We love you! We just didn’t feel we were treated fairly by R Family and honestly their attitude sucks!
I have to say I am really shocked Family Pride or R Family has not responded to any comments on the great 2007 Family Week debacle! So much went wrong and so many voices have spoken out, yet the folks at Family Pride and R Family are showing arrogance by pretending nothing went wrong. It’s just a “sweep it under the carpet” method of dealing with the problems. They think in one year people will forget and then they can rip us off all over again!
Shame on Family Pride and R Family. I would have expected more from both groups!
I am very disappointed by the lack of acknowledgement from RFamily and Family Pride for the paid events debacles. I have also written several emails to both organizations and have not heard a word from either group after four weeks.
I suggest that we, as gay consumers, bring this to the attention of the gay media in order to be taken seriously and be given the apology and refunds we deserve?? My partner and I refuse to attend any 2008-on Family Week events R Family sponsors.
The whole affair has left me feeling very suspicious of both organizations This saddens me as prior to this summer I had complete admiration for both groups.
If we cannot trust and depend on our own communtiy organizations, who can we truly trust??
Shame on Family Pride and R Family for your lack of responsibility!!!
Villanova I completely agree with you. I have also contacted both R Family and Family Pride and have heard nothing. They want to sweep this one under the table, take our money and run. Family Week events were a shame. They were expensive and had nothing. At first I thought it was just bad planning with R Family, now I think R Family and Family Pride are laughing their way to the bank. They don,t care about gay families. They want to pad their pockets and run. I know plan on writing the local paper here in Chicago and let them know how we were ripped off. No more money from our family for Family Pride or R Family!
Family Pride — R Family Vacations - RIP OFFS!!!
Would you expect anything less from Rosie O’Donnell?
She is a selfish pig who starts fights with anyone she meets.
Not a hero or a role model, just a fat girl with a chip on her shoulder who wants to make money off the gays - they are the last group supporting her and her crazy ass behavior.
It took me a while to get what the connection was between the Circus theme and what we got - a cold corn dog! I finally got it! Barnum once said “There is a sucker born every minute”. For family week there was a tent full of suckers - us!
Gregg, Kelli and Jennifer were sitting in the back laughing at all the suckers who just paid $30.00 for a cold corn dog!
Family Pride you are amazing — Yes you proved Barnum correct - there is a sucker born every minute!
It is ridiculous, and an extremely shady business move, that no one from Family Pride and RFamily have not apologized via email, mailing, website to its registrants.
Folks - even if you are embarrased by the disastrous events, your silence shows you have NO REGARD for your members.
You are a sameful and deceitful organization that should be embarassed by your unprofessionalism!!!
Pardon my bad spelling, I am very angry!! - but I say it again —
Your silence is shameful!!!!
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