Nashville community activist Dwayne Jenkins has been named this year's Nashville Pride Community Service Award recipient.
Dwayne is the Brothers Untied (BU) Program Coordinator at Nashville CARES, Tennessee’s largest and oldest AIDS Service Organization. Since his employment at CARES he has served on a variety of committees including the Tennessee Community Planning Group for HIV Prevention and CARE, as well as serves on the Advisory Board of Jackson State Universities Mississippi Urban Research Center for Capacity Building Assistance.
Dwayne is also the Founder and Director of the Brothers United Network, Inc., an independent 501c3 organization which is a collective of BU Chapters in Chattanooga, Memphis, Knoxville and West TN. In 2000, BU developed a youth group called Y-BU (Young Brothers United) for men under 25, and in 2005 helped to form Sisters United, the official lesbian focused group. As a grassroots organization, the BU Network helps to provide HIV prevention education, affirmation, empowerment and referral services in each of the metropolitan cities in the state.
Jenkins is the president of Nashville Black Pride, the city’s annual celebration of African American LGBT life & culture, and is also a board member of the International Federation of Black Prides (IFBP) Organization. The IFBP is a collective of more than 26 cities that host annual celebrations including Toronto and South African. Born and raised in The Bronx, he attended Buffalo State College for a BA in broadcasting and communications, became a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., and has previously worked in marketing and retail management.
After relocating from New York to Nashville in 1994, he created the BU organization in 1996 and lives with his partner of 12 years and their Cocker Spaniel. Jenkins has received a number of awards and acknowledgments within the HIV and LGBT forums including the Mary Catherine Strobel Award for Volunteer Group of The Year, as well as been a finalist for the FRIST Foundation Award of Achievement.