About Team Vancouver

2009-2010 Board of Directors

  • Dan Quon, President
  • Joel Leung, Vice President
  • Jeff Bohnen, Treasurer
  • Nicolas Demers, Secretary
  • Rome Lavrencic
  • Rick Michaud
  • Fabian Stern
  • Tracey Williams

 

Be part of the team! Sign-up for Team Vancouver today.


History

Team Vancouver was created in 1989 to bring Gay Games III to Vancouver. Following what became a game of firsts - first international record, first truly international Gay Games, first cultural festival for a Gay Games - Team Vancouver continued to play a role on the global stage as a founding member of the Federation of Gay Games (FGG). Team Vancouver stayed on to organized BC's entries in subsequent Games in New York, Amsterdam, Sydney, and Chicago. Team Vancouver hosted the FGG AGM in 2001 and partnered with the Vancouver Parks Board in presenting a civic reception at the Roundhouse Community Centre.

The Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association (GLISA) was created in 2004 to further support and provide resources to an ever expanding movement in sports and culture around the world. Team Vancouver joined GLISA and attended the inaugural Congress held in September 2005. Team Vancouver is highly respected on the international LGBT sports scene and represents Vancouver and British Columbia at the annual meetings of both GLISA and the FGG.


 

Mission Statement

The Board of Directors of Team Vancouver invites you to join in evolving the existing Team Vancouver and taking it to the next level in building a cohesive, cooperative and truly unified Vancouver LGBT sport and culture community. Our Associate program was a successful first step in developing this community, but it remains too passive.

As we continue to build on the successes of the Outgames and the Gay Games of 2006, Team Vancouver envisions an organization that not only promotes LGBT sport and culture in Vancouver and on the world stage by acting as a resource for information dissemination, coordination of athletes and cultural participants attending the two major world multi-sport events and providing a voice to GLISA and the FGG, that is fully and actively represented and run by the Vancouver local LGBT sport and culture community.

We see an opportunity for all Vancouver LGBT athletes, sport organizations, cultural groups and participants, whether firmly established or just starting out, to create a Team Vancouver which can be a resource for all athletes and cultural participants. A Team Vancouver which is run by these groups and individuals in a cooperative and mutually beneficial way for participants in local, national and international activities and events. The benefits are many fold including:

  1. Effective and coordinated communication within Vancouver's LGBT sport and culture community
  2. Promotion of member organizations, teams or sporting activities via a central website with links to their websites and by having an annual Sport/Culture Festival showcasing each group's activities
  3. Exposure to new members via a comprehensive informational site
  4. Increased awareness, support, coordination and opportunities of/for fundraising activities within our LGBT community, particularly the business community and larger corporations and the opportunity to have access to tax deductible donations
  5.  Access to new or larger volunteer pools
  6. Greater opportunities to plan and host tournaments or multi-sport/culture events
  7. Bursary funding opportunities for attending events or just participating in local activities
  8. Increased opportunity to exposure within the LGBT community to healthy and safe activities as alternatives to drug and alcohol abuse
  9. Greater exposure for younger members of our community to the opportunities which exist for them in sport and culture activities

We see an evolved Team Vancouver as having a strong Sport/Culture Council at its core with representatives from all major sport teams/organizations and cultural groups who advise and monitor the activities of the Team Vancouver board officers and act as a communication conduit from the board to member teams/organizations.

We see Team Vancouver being a year-round resource for our LGBT Sport and Culture Community rather than something that has to reinvent itself every four years just prior to the major world multi-sport and culture events.

Please join us in making this vision a reality.