We held the summit and it was a great success! We will definitely be hosting more in the future. We had a great assortment of workshops on everything from art to organizing in your school to coming out to parents (and we even got some parents involved with the summit!) New friendships were made, and older friendships were rekindled and cemented. The community and sense of support that was created is amazing. The Trans Youth Summit was fabulous.
Massachusetts's Biannual Transgender Youth Summit
Submitted by abigailcw on Wed, 10/29/2008 - 19:33
the problem:
Transgender youth do not, as it currently stands, have a cohesive community to call their own. It is often difficult to network with other transgender youth due to logistical problems – we don’t know how to find one another, or who we can talk to about transgender issues. It is also difficult, at times, for transgender youth to find resources that apply directly to ourselves, or to get pertinent information in regards to legal, medical, and general wellbeing advice. Transgender issues are still not well understood in many families, high school, colleges, places of employment, and places of worship and many of us do not feel well equipped to speak about these issues with their families, teachers, or peers. Holding a summit for transgender youth would provide much needed networking for transgender and allied youth in the Massachusetts area, as well as other parts of New England, that would equip us with the necessary resources to bring greater awareness to our families, schools, and greater community.
vital stats:
people impacted:
200people involved:
100why it's important:
We are hosting a transgender youth summit in February of 2008 for transgender and allied youth across Massachusetts, as well as in other parts of New England. The summit would include workshops addressing a number of issues including Lobbying Your Elected Officials, Coming Out to Your Parents, and Organizing Within Your School, as well as breakout groups for different sub sects of the transgender population and groups like zine making and spoken word poetry, providing an outlet to express ourselves via different media. These different workshops will be run both by youth as well as adults who are active in the trans community, providing an array of knowledge and a variety of opinions and viewpoints about different issues.
We feel that these workshops, as well as just giving youth the space to connect with one another and with adults in the community, will provide trans and allied youth with invaluable resources as well as giving a greater sense of acceptance and inclusion in the larger LGBT community.
the plan of action:
In order to make the transgender youth summit work on a limited budget and involve the local community we are reaching out to a number of local businesses for in kind donations. We also found a space that would meet our needs and was still affordable by reaching out to the trans youth community to see what resources they had access to. By doing grassroots organizing within the trans youth community we are providing these much needed services to the trans youth community for free; however it does cost money for a number of necessary things we require such as usage of location, buying food, providing transportation subsidies, and outreach. Finding funding for a traditionally underserved population has proved difficult.
how you can get involved:
We would love your help spreading the word about the summit! We are also soliciting ideas about the programming of the summit, and are looking for financial contributions and in-kind donations.
If you would like other suggestions for how to get involved, please email youth@masstpc.org
project updates:
07/28/2009
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