TOLEDO, Ohio — In honor of Pride weekend, Equality Toledo announced a major change in efforts to better serve the community.
The LGBTQ+ nonprofit organization will be moving its office to Planned Parenthood.
Executive director of Equality Toledo, Brent Rabie, said this move unlocks more than just a new location for them.
"It's going to be a community space," Rabie said. "We're going to be able to host events for people to feel a sense of community."
Combining their resources with Planned Parenthood, Rabie said it'll maximize their effectiveness, making this a great partnership.
"The health care aspect that Planned Parenthood provides and specifically the gender-affirming care that they provide, which is really important to our community," Rabie said. "That's just going to make it easier for our community to access these kinds of services as well as our services all in one building."
Rabie said the new space will also enable people in the community to meet one another and mingle as people will be able to host their own events at the space.
"If people want to have a book club, if people want to have just once a month, they all get together and use our facility," Rabie said.
But that's not all Equality Toledo will have in store.
Rabie said they're in the works of creating a new program and it involves a legal clinic.
"The legal clinic still is in the works, but that's going to be kind of providing legal services for specifically LGBTQ people," Rabie said. "That could look like things like name changes for the trans community."
He said this partnership will also strengthen communication between the two organizations as they both work to serve the underserved in this community.
"We share similar ideals and beliefs and we're like-minded organizations that are here to serve underserved populations and fight for people to have access to health care and fight for people to have equal access to everything, housing, anything that our community is facing discrimination at. We're both in that fight," Rabie said.
Rabie said Equality Toledo is hosting a ribbon cutting event in September to celebrate this new location.