This time last week we were undergoing last-minute preparations for ReachOut.com’s first ever participation in Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade, the culmination of a month-long festival in support of the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex (LGBTQI) community.

Carrying a 3-metre ReachOut.com banner, our own Doug Millen, together with former Youth Ambassador Chris Pycroft and Mindframe National Media Initiative’s Acting Program Manager, Marc Bryant, led an excessively-glittered, highly-charged group of 50 staff and friends of ReachOut.com along the 2.5km route from Sydney’s Hyde Park to Moore Park, reinforcing the message with a colourful display of glow sticks, finger lights and lit-up beach balls that ReachOut.com is ‘Always Turned On’ to help LGBTQI young people.

With more than 10,000 people participating in the parade, the atmosphere was, well, electric. “This is the best experience of my life”, was said more than once, by more than one person in the group, and many other highlights from the night were captured in the moment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Tracking back to 9 February, ReachOut.com kicked off involvement in the Mardi Gras Festival with another ‘first’: a stall at Fair Day, which was attended by 60,000 people at Sydney’s Victoria Park. Making LGBTQI young people aware that ReachOut.com is ‘Always Turned On' as a place for help was our focus, and we were thrilled with the response to this message from both young people and professionals who work with young people.

Fair Day was followed by the launch of Whenever I Need It: Special report on the help provided to LGBTQI young people who access ReachOut.com on 13 February, and our first-time involvement in the Mardi Gras Film Festival with the sponsorship of a special screening of Geography Club on 22 February. It was here that we also premiered a short film on being gay called ‘It Gets Boring’, produced by young Sydney filmmaker Brendan Cain.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the Mardi Gras Festival with us and helped spread the word that ReachOut.com is 'Always Turned On' to help LGBTQI young people. We’ll be back next year for sure!