MILWAUKEE — A couple in Milwaukee is leading a campaign to help the community celebrate Pride Month.
Nate Koch and Justin Liesener started the Pride at Home campaign in 2020 during the pandemic. Koch said with Pride celebrations around the world canceled, they still wanted to find a way to celebrate Pride together, despite being apart.
The couple started by setting out a single yard sign in their front yard along with Pride and transgender flags for anyone to take for free.
“We thought maybe we’d go through 20 flags or so and we ended up going over 300 that first year,” said Koch.
Koch said they never expected this to grow so much and make such an impact on their surrounding neighborhoods.
“We would take walks with our dogs around the neighborhood and just see flags in everybody’s yard,” he said. “We thought it was pretty cool. We realized we weren’t giving our community enough credit for the support that we had.”
Last year, more than 80 families took part. After seeing the positive feedback and results, they wanted to make it even bigger. They decided to go digital, to allow people outside of their neighborhood to participate. People can order their own signs on Shutterfly or the flags from Amazon.
“It was really cool, especially in 2020 when things were kind of tense on racial levels and the LGBTQ+ community was facing a lot of adversity,” said Liesner. “Just seeing the support in our community made us feel a little bit safer.”
All of this is going toward a bigger cause. Anyone who takes a flag or displays a sign is encouraged to donate to The Trevor Project. It’s the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.
“I think it’s really important that we not just show our pride and celebrate during the month of June, with Pride flags and Pride parades, but also making sure that we’re giving back to the most vulnerable community,” said Liesnser.
Koch said each year the number of people setting out their signs and flags has continued to grow and they’ve raised thousands for the Trevor Project.
Click here for more.