Making Strides and Thinking Ahead...

Last Wednesday, June 22nd, I got the chance to see the fruits of my labor in the form of a workshop on internship programs for organizations in Pittsburgh that serve the LGBT community. This is something I started to put together back in April and went through the steps of:

• generating an invite list;
• securing the room;
• feeling confident enough to assist in leading the workshop;
• developing a discussion about our lgbt-community;
• email, phone and face-to-face outreach for the event;
• buying snacks for the event;
• DOING IT!;
• thinking ahead to what happens next...

so...the sunday before the event I had no confirmed RSVPs and was kinda freaking out, but I am really happy to report that 8 people attended from the following 7 organizations: New Voices Pittsburgh, Delta Foundation, Planned Parenthood, GLSEN, GLCC, ALPHA, and PATF! What a great mix of organizations and perspectives. It seems like the most helpful part of the workshop is the discussion between organizations: what they need, what works, what doesn't.

I see the "Creating a Successful Internship Program" workshop as offering assistance not only in comprehensive internship program creation but also in just taking the time to take a hard look at the organization's goals for the future. What is the work that needs to get done? What work would we like to get done? How can we provide a great experience for an intern and also benefit from the intern being there as much as possible? There is much potential for brainstorming & breakthroughs.

The discussion following the workshop was prompted by sharing my personal perspective of our LGBTQ community's assets and challenges and how creating better internship programs can help the community. Workshop attendees provided additional assets including: cultural history of people of color, labor rights and challenges including: HIV/AIDS stigma, neighborhood segregation, inadequate transportation.

Transportation kept coming up and that was a surprise for me: I know our transportation system is seriously lacking, unstable, and unreliable. But I never had considered it a queer issue before. But of course it makes sense: for lower-income LGBTQ people, especially youth and people living outside of a major city, access to safe, reliable and affordable transportation means the difference between having access to services & a queer community and not being able to participate, to their detriment and our community's. Plus for queer youth who may not be out to their families, they especially need independent means of transportation to get support and attend community events. Here is one issue just about every community in Pittsburgh can rally behind: TRANSPORTATION. We need it to be more affordable, more reliable, offer more transportation options (water taxis, car taxis, trains, trolleys, bike lanes, etc.).

I also want to respond a little to another issue that come up when discussing one major LGBTQ community challenge: divisions within the community. Namely, how do we actually build community and do it responsibly? For example, if I see that the group I work with is not serving the African-American/Black community as we should, I could go to where the community is, talk with various people, get new perspectives, etc. What often happens is taking one person's perspective as representative of an entire community, expecting that person to be the educator all the time, and not taking responsibility for the pain that might arise when talking about these issues. I have experienced the fatigue of being a community representative--people asking me questions that are not appropriate or relevant and maybe something I absolutely do not want to talk about right then and there. Feeling that need to speak up for my community when I see it isn't represented in a "representative" study...There is a lot of discomfort and pain associated with these conversations. Seeing each person as unique and only a representative of one may be helpful. Taking a stand and then responding respectfully to critiques, changing behavior, speaking up for those with less privilege, using one's status to advocate for others. These are ways to build community.

Stay tuned for another post about what happens next...