Every year many members of the Los Angeles Leather Community come together for a very unique fundraising event during the holidays; customizing wreaths with decorations and with gift packages from local and national businesses and then auctioning them off to raise money and awareness for non-profits selected by AVATAR LA.
This year's intended recipients of the proceeds were:
Roots of Equality
http://www.rootsofequality.org/
And
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention http://www.afsp.org
This year, I along with Aurelius from the Eagle LA and Mr. LA Leather, Ken Hearst combined forces to create a wreath with the theme of the Great Barrier Reef which featured an Australian, nautical, and beachcomer motif.
Last year Aurelius and I were laughing at the way "wreath" was being pronounced "reef" by a participant and came up with the idea of a "reef wreath". A way of getting people to say something silly.
So we thus presented:
The Great Barrier Wreath.
It had lots of fish, seaweed like strands of decorator stuff and silk floral 'jelkyfish'. The Stockroom gave us some silicon playtoys and a vibrating toy in a bottle as well as novelty condom tips that looked like sea anemones. Rough Trade gave us a leather shirt and Ken and I put in some other stuff like DVDs and even a wreath box!
Here's a few close up:
It was great seeing so many people out. Many had traveled to LA from across the US for Randy Carmenaty's fundraiser being held the next day at Oil Cam Harrys. I truly enjoy the reunions we get to have with our extended leather families. In attendance: Jeffrey Payne IML31, American Leather Family (Alex, Dakota, johhnyboy), Julian Marshburn, Lenny Broberg, Rick Russell and his partner Brian V, & David Stewart- Mr. Bolt Leather (Sacramento), and Brian Denheart and KC. I also saw many local friends including George Wong, Paul, Robert Green, Diego, West, Mike Gerle, Jeff Gent, Pat, Jeff Waca, Randy Carmenaty, Ross Wood, and current titleholders including LAL2009 Ken Hearst, WCR Jeffrey Moline, CSW2010 Louie Pacheco, Bears LA Leather 2009 Franco P., Mr. Sanctuary 2009 Willie Robinson.
As it was an Avatar event, many men from AvatarLA were present too.
Information about the proceed recipients:
Roots of Equality
http://www.rootsofequality.org/
From their website:
"Roots of Equality aims to organize grassroots efforts to combat discriminatory legislation, initiatives, and laws based on sexuality and protect existing rights. Our goal is to motivate like-minded individuals to join us and provide an outlet to express themselves through organized visibility and individual expression. We are based in and specialize in Downtown Los Angeles as an emerging center for GLBT activism."
And
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
http://www.afsp.org
From their website:
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is the leading national not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research, education and advocacy, and to reaching out to people with mental disorders and those impacted by suicide.
On Their LGBT initiative:
Funding is also being sought for a national summit on preventing LGBT suicide, to be held in late 2009. The goal of the summit is to forge a broad coalition of leading suicide prevention and LGBT organizations, government, public and private philanthropic organizations and the media to develop a national “roadmap” for preventing LGBT suicide and reducing suicide risk.
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