June 10, 2021
By DIVERSEcity
Raise your flag for Pride Month, says Kristi Pinderi of DIVERSEcity
June is Pride Month, and Kristi Pinderi, DIVERSEcity’s LGBTQ+ support worker and facilitator of our Together Now LGBTQ+ Newcomer Peer Support Group, wants to share what Pride means to him.
An LGBTQ+ activist and recent immigrant to Canada, Kristi was chatting with his peers from his home country of Albania to discuss how to celebrate Pride during a pandemic.
“My fellow LGBTQ+ activists in Albania were planning Tirana Pride last year when they had to stop the planning because of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Kristi. “On an afternoon in late April, I was invited to join them via Zoom to talk about it. The topic of the meeting was not to find a way how to avoid the lockdown, nor to talk about the event, or about the series of events. We sat together in a meaning making process. We wanted to visualize why Pride is important and why it has changed the way we see each other and the world.”