Why Long Beach Trans Pride was created?

Long Beach Trans Pride Festival is a one-day event to highlight, empower, inspire and normalize our vibrant Trans and Nonbinary community, and to show strength in unity with Trans folks.  The event was inspired by Alexa Castanon, supported by Angel Macias, and produced by California Families in Focus, a 501c(3) nonprofit, in collaboration with a few other allied community organizations and businesses. 

Alexa’s inspiration to create this festival came because she wanted a big platform to highlight transgender people who live, work and thrive in Long Beach.  She pitched an idea to Angel Macias to create the “Angel’s on Earth” Christmas awards banquet to highlight members of the Trans community who were going above and beyond to help the community but who receive no compensation for their services. 

Angel Macias put her own money and resources into creating an amazing “Angels on Earth” Christmas Dinner and Awards recognition.  She was so inspired by the stories of all the award recipients that she wanted to do more to support the Trans community.  So, she agreed to use her privilege and connections to advocate for members of the Trans community, and to use her platform to spread the message that members of the Trans community must be treated with the same respect and dignity as every other human being, and that their lives are just as valuable and as important as our cis gender community. 

After attending vigils and rallies to denounce the tragic killings of Trans women of color, Angel decided to go “all in”. Thus, between Angel, Alexa and some of the other Trans members at California Families in Focus, the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival was born.  Here, young, talented, caring and courageous members of our Long Beach community will be called upon to use their voice to educate, elevate and encourage every Trans and gender non-conforming member of our community. 

California Families in Focus "CFF" is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Long Beach, California, dedicated to working with youth and their families. We have over 25 years of providing services and officially became incorporated in April of 2002. 

Since then we have provided a series of award winning and nationally recognized tutoring, mentoring, health education and leadership programs for youth and their families and well-organized events that shed light on social issues affecting our youth, their families and our overall community.

Our Missions, Visions & Objectives: 

Mission: To develop and provide positive and innovative events and social service programs for youth and their families to achieve empowerment and purpose.

Vision: To inspire our community to become proactive in achieving their educational, professional and personal goals and create a thriving environment where youth and their families can live healthy and happy lives.

Objectives: 

• To increase the number of high school graduates
• To offer opportunities to obtain higher education
• To increase employment skills
• To increase access to community resources
• To decrease incidents of bullying and suicide

Code of Ethics:

• Integrity in our actions, words and deeds
• Respect for the communities we work with
• Accountability and responsibility for our decisions and their consequences
• Service about self