CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Charlotte Pride Festival and Parade is returning to Uptown Charlotte after the pandemic put it on a hiatus for the last two years.

This is the first time the event will be held in person since 2019.

When the festival couldn’t happen in person during the pandemic, Charlotte Pride says there was a loss of donations, awareness and access to community organizations, services and programs.

Transcend Charlotte and Carolinas Care Partnership (CCP), two community organizations, are excited to be back in person.

Derrick Pegg, who is an outpatient mental health therapist for CCP, says being face-to-face with folks will make a big difference.

“It means we are going to be able to reach members of the community we haven’t been able to reach in years due to COVID restrictions, and just, otherwise if you didn’t know that someone was here, know that a service was there, how could you find out? So now we can reach out to the community on a larger scale,” Pegg said.

Transcend Charlotte and CCP recently partnered together and now operate as a family under one roof, located at 5855 Executive Center Drive, Suite 200, in Charlotte. 

Bethany Corrigan, the executive director of Transcend Charlotte and director of LGBTQ Services with CCP, says the partnership will allow them to provide more services.

“Because of our partnership with CCP, we are able to offer people folks in-house HIV, hep C, syphilis testing,” Corrigan said. “There is wider access to housing programs, mental health, just a lot of things we can connect folks with.”

You can find the organizations at Pride over the weekend and connect with them there.

For Pride Festival time and location information, click here.