Mario Canedo organizes KC’s first Latino Gay Pride festival

Camp KC has a cool story about local radio personality and HIV/AIDS outreach worker Mario Canedo organizing the metro’s first Latino Gay Pride event Saturday, Sept. 12, in Hyde Park. The free event is scheduled to run from 1 p.m. to 7 pm.  and feature soccer and volleyball, music, and discussions and education on LGBT issues. If you have a chance, you should check it out.

I wrote a profile of Canedo for this year’s Sex Issue. Besides talking about adult issues on his La Super X radio show, Canedo does HIV/AIDS education work for the Good Samaritan

​Project. The organization’s director of development, Paul Showalter, credited Canedo for major breakthroughs creating a dialogue with Latinos that no one had been able to talk to before. “Because of Mario, we’ve had major breakthroughs. He’s engaging hundreds of people, in the course of a year, we wouldn’t engage otherwise,” Showalter says. “And things started to open up.”

So if you’ve got some time on the 12th, stop by Hyde Park. Canedo’s one of the good guys.