INSPIRE Awards - Welcome to the INSPIRE Awards... Other stories to tell...

Welcome to INSPIRE Awards

Honouring the most inspiring people, youth, businesses and organizations in the LGBTQ community in the Greater Toronto Area

Inspiration is defined as...

An abstract concept or idea...it has spiritual connotations as well as practical connotations. It is some person, event, or thing that can inspire the mind, emotions, or the body to a higher level of feeling or activity.

Our definition of inspiration is...

A word that sums up the LGBTQ community and our friends and allies...a community that has worked and continues to work very hard to change the perceptions and prejudices of the world; a community that has brought beauty and art and creativity and literature and much more to the world around us.

Our LGBTQ community is filled with stories of inspiration, and of individuals, businesses and organizations that inspire all of us.

Following a hugely successful launch, decisions were made to continue with the awards into the future and to form a not-for-profit organization with the mission of facilitating the annual awards and inspiring the community. The original founders of the INSPIRE Awards vouched to "inspire the community and bring it together; we will celebrate our past and present heroes so we never forget the work it took and still takes to build a community, and the contributions many make for the betterment of our own community and the world around us at large, and we will encourage living an inspiring life by creating future programs to that effect".

Each year will see the INSPIRE Awards with the help of the LGBTQ community choose the following categories to honour:

• Lifetime Achievement Awards (Two awarded annually)
• LGBTQ Person of the Year
• LGBTQ Youth of the Year
• LGBTQ Positive Business of the Year
• Inspiring Community Organization of the Year
• LUX Award

The honourees of each category will be chosen through community nominations and decided on by a judging panel formed of representatives of the awards board of directors, Presenting and Community Partners, and members of the LGBTQ community. Celebrations will take place at an annual summer event and the title holders and nominees of each year's titles will go on to march in the Toronto Pride parade.