Cochrane’s quiet LGBTQ2S+ community has been establishing a group to call their own and are now gearing up to become a non-profit with projects to begin as soon as Fall 2018. The town’s first and only LGBTQ peer support and networking group – Your Life Out (YLO) – disappeared several months ago after five of its six board members moved away all within the same month. Now, Rashelle Elburg and her two co-founders are looking to revitalize the idea in a brand new group, which will be given a name at the end of the month from a naming contest. “We’ve been kind of working behind the scenes right now just doing our vision, mission, and coming up with all the background kind of stuff,” Elburg said. The group’s mission – to eventually become a non-profit. “We’ll be doing educational seminars like, what do you do when your kid comes out or (teaching) certain terms – because I know there are so many terms out there right now – like what it means to be transgender,” Elburg said. “We have connections with Calgary Sexual Health, they’ve agreed to do some education seminars if we have the people.” The group has also been in dialogue with Make Good and are hoping to have a project underway by this Fall season. There are six newly recruited board members. “None of us have had bad experiences in Cochrane that we can think of, it’s not really that scary. We’re just trying to highlight that and we’re trying to provide resources and stuff like that,” said Elburg. “We’re all about diversity and inclusion. We want to include everybody not just the LGBTQ2S+ community but it’s about the allies and to show that Cochrane is not such a scary place,” Elburg said. On Tuesday, the group held a meet and mingle at Half Hitch Brewing Company and on July 28, the group will be having a cake day revealing ceremony across from MacKay’s Cochrane Ice Cream.
