This is a week and a holiday that focuses our attention on finding and expressing gratitude.

Some say thankfulness is hard to find after a year like the last one; I respectfully disagree. It’s exactly in years like these that I find myself most grateful and above all else, grateful to be a San Diegan.

Grateful to be amongst a community that, for almost four decades, has been infused with a spirit of generosity and service that has helped us all move forward at an incredible rate. Few cities in the nation have as broad-ranging, vibrant and well-developed a GLBT community as ours. Fewer still have been able to sustain it across the tumult of the last 40 years. Your compassionate and courageous dedication is what I am grateful for today.

For four decades dedicated San Diegans have built, sustained and grown organizations as varied as sports leagues, teams and organizations, including: softball, swimming, wrestling and tennis leagues; performing arts organizations such as our choruses, choirs and Diversionary Theatre; one of the best Pride parades and Pride organizations in the nation; GSDBA, one of the largest business associations in the nation; a flourishing and affirmative faith community that includes a new church for Metropolitan Community Church-San Diego; life-giving health and human service and HIV/AIDS organizations such as Mama’s Kitchen; large and engaged political groups such as San Diego Democratic Club, Equality California, Marriage Equality-USA, Victory Fund and Human Rights Campaign; some of the finest bloggers, reporters and social media members in the country, including two 24/7 on-line news organizations; Human Dignity Foundation, an GLBT foundation that continues to grow and to serve…and the list goes on longer than any of us want to read!

Each of these entities, organizations and clubs has had four decades of volunteers, generous donors, staff and board members, all of whom have given hours and hours of service, amazing talent and precious resources in service to this community. There are hundreds of active, engaged elders mentoring and working alongside an equally incredible number of energetic, creative and talented new leaders and activists. Thanks and gratitude to each of you!

This week I am grateful for that incredible dedication and the spirit of service that defines San Diegans. San Diegans have built the second oldest and third largest LGBT Community Center in the nation, and done the incredibly hard work of sustaining it! You have helped us provide programs and services to seniors, families, youth, people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer survivors, women, men, transgender people and people of color. Your generosity and service have helped make possible services and programs for more than 36,000 San Diegans annually, 3000 people a month!

Because of you, every day The Center is able to answer more than 100 calls for information, referrals and help. Because of you we can offer GLBT-affirmative health and mental health services for more than 500 people every week, and provide support and resources to the nearly 400 young people who visit the Hillcrest Youth Center every month. Because of you we are able to organize AIDS Walk San Diego, the region’s largest one-day HIV/AIDS fundraiser, which benefits over 20 organizations serving people living with HIV, we can continue to reach out to 18,000 people every week to share information about GLBT community events and resources, and we can offer more than 100 community groups a safe place to meet.

You help The Center make all of these things happen. You helped create all of the many GLBT organizations that serve so many.

I cannot thank you each enough for your service, commitment and generosity!