We are thrilled to announce that the Paul Rapoport Foundation has awarded PFY a three-year $175,000 grant to address disparities among LGBT youth of color.
The grant will enable the hiring of a social worker to provide services directly to students in Hempstead, Roosevelt and Uniondale school districts, including counseling, support groups, anti-homophobia and anti-transphobia education and Gay/Straight Alliance co-facilitation.
While young African American and Hispanic LGBTs negotiate many of the same challenges that all young LGBTs face—unsafe schools and lack of family support for example—racial and economic segregation on Long Island is a reality. Many youth of color grow up in under-resourced communities, where there are fewer opportunities and additional stigma.
According to Long Island Crisis Center’s Associate Executive Director Andy Peters: “What we tend to see with PFY’s youth of color is a more complex set of challenges—poverty, the need to take on independent roles at early ages, and day-to-day survival taking priority over planning for the future.” As a result, the path to healthy LGBT adulthood is often even more difficult, and physical and emotional ‘self-care’ can take a backseat to more immediate needs like earning money and helping to stabilize the family.
The Rapoport grant will provide free, high quality support to these youth with the goals of promoting positive identity development and increasing skills to manage stressful life events. The funds give PFY the opportunity to re-instate school-based services in three priority districts. While staff have conducted LGBT outreach and counseling in the target schools as far back as 2003, services ceased in 2010 when the NYS Dept. of Health’s redirected PFY’s adolescent prevention funds from school to community settings.
The Paul Rapoport Foundation—http://www.paulrapoportfundation.org—supports programs and organizations working in the areas of social services, healthcare, legal rights and issues, and community empowerment for three populations of low or no income: (1) transgender communities of color; (2) LGTBQ youth of color, ages 24 and under; and (3) LGTB seniors of color aged 60 and over. The Foundation has supported PFY’s work since 1993, but this multi-year grant will be its last, as part of a planned spend-out by 2014.
