Magical Metamorphosis - East End Kids Pride 2025

Celebrate QUEER JOY and Magical Metamorphosis! Come together with rainbow families, friends, neighbours and our queer community to kick off Pride Month in Toronto's East End with a sparkley celebration of in the park!

This year’s theme is all about Magical Metamorphosis — a joyful transformation that celebrates the power of growing, glowing, and showing up as your full, radiant self. We’re turning the park into a celebration of queer magick and youth-led brilliance, and we need your help to make it shine even brighter!

This theme was selected by the kids/youth and parent group behind East End Kids Pride. Butterflies are powerful symbols of Transformation and Rebirth. The butterfly’s metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature is a prime example of transformation, making it a symbol of change, growth, and the ability to evolve. It’s all about the journey of self-discovery, growth, and inspiration that helped shape this year’s theme choice.

The third annual Toronto East End Kids Pride will take place on Saturday, June 1, 2025, and we need your support to make this grassroots community event even more joyous, colourful, and celebratory! Help us fundraise this youth-inspired, youth-led Pride event to celebrate our beautiful queer, trans, questioning and gender-variant existence!

How it all started:

In June 2023, an awesome 7-year-old kid asked her two moms if she could organize a Pride Parade for her friends who are rainbow kids or who are part of rainbow families. Six days later, over 300 people came out to celebrate the first East End Kids Pride in Toronto’s Maryland Park, near Main & Danforth.

It became abundantly clear that this event was overdue and it has inspired us to make an annual East End Kids Pride!

Last year, in 2024, East End Kids Pride expanded and moved to Dentonia Park. With an estimated 1000 attendees, we were able to offer a variety of new programming, with the help of 50+ volunteers from our community.

We are a grassroots group of parents, kids, and community members living in Toronto’s East End (including the rainbow family that started it all) who are organizing and fundraising this year’s East End Kids Pride. The event will centre kids and youth, and will include a parade through Dentonia Park, face-painting, dancing, snacks, performances, a community art project, an arts market, and much more! We are partnering with East End Arts to help bring the magick and spread that east end love.

GOALS

(How your donations will support East End Kids Pride)

The first $1,000 will go toward event essentials like poster printing, rented tables and canopies, A/V equipment, and sign-making, face-painting and art supplies!

When we reach $2,500, we will engage Shadowland Theatre Company to run a workshop for the kids and youth helping to organize East End Kids Pride, as well as animate the event, tell our queer stories and lead the parade.

When we reach $4,000, we will invite the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance, a group by and for Black and Latinx 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, to lead a voguing and dancing workshop at East End Kids Pride, fostering community development.

When we reach $5,000, we will invite Drag Performers to read a couple of stories about gender variance and cultural diversity, as well as spreading messages of love and kindness, and of course, a couple of stellar performances!

Last year, with your generous support, we were able to have an incredible event and even had some funds to roll into this year. Likewise, any funds remaining at the end of the 2025 event will be used as a starting point for organizing the next year’s parade and celebration!

Any amount you’re able to contribute makes a difference! If you’re not able to donate at this time, you can still support by sharing this campaign with your friends and family, volunteering to help organize, and of course celebrating with us on June 1st!

East End Kids Pride is about visibility, joy, and belonging. It’s about letting our rainbow kids — and all queer, trans, questioning and gender-diverse folks — feel seen, celebrated, and loved out loud.

Let's foster community relationships and actively, boldly, and colourfully celebrate the diversity within our community and neighbourhood. As always, allies, comrades and co-conspirators are invited to celebrate alongside us. Together, let’s fill the park with colour, glitter, laughter and queer joy.

See you on June 1st — Thank you for being part of this magical metamorphosis!