Sharing Piece from Coro Newsletter

Rayden Sorock is the first Initiative for Transgender Leadership (ITL) fellow, currently placed at Coro Pittsburgh. He shares with us about the ITL, his experience working with Coro over the past several months, and considers what could be next. His final presentation is Friday, November 18^th at the Union Project from 6:30-9:30. This event is free and open to the public, so save the date!

So what is the Initiative for Transgender Leadership all about?

Often transgender people are held back from actively pursuing challenging professional experiences, of they are actively turned away from these positions due to discrimination. Two years ago, three friends—R T Peck, Jen Saffron and Madeleine Hershey—got together and decided they would do something to bridge the professional gap for young transgender people. What emerged was a 10-month paid fellowship position for one transgender person between the ages of 17-25. That fellow would be placed with a sponsoring non-profit organization in Pittsburgh and would receive mentorship from R.T., Jen and Madeleine throughout the term.

The primary goals of the Initiative for Transgender Leadership (ITL) fellowship are: to provide a professional and leadership development opportunity to one trans-identified youth; to serve the sponsoring organization's mission of diversity, as well as expand its service capacity; and to "change the world"!

How did you come to apply for this opportunity?

I have been living in Pittsburgh for almost 2 years. I first visited in 2008 to stay with a friend and fell in love with the city.

I grew up in Massachusetts and attended college at State University of New York at Purchase where I studied literature. After I graduated, I moved in with my parents to their new home in Maryland and started hunting for a position working on a farm. Through the PA Association of Sustainable Agriculture, I found Blackberry Meadows Farm in Natrona Heights, PA and lived and worked there for a full season. I continued an interest in the environment and education while working at the Waldorf School, Construction Junction and Garden Dreams.

Last fall, a friend of mine saw the ITL's call for applicants and suggested I apply. After an interview process, I was selected in November of 2010 and begun my fellowship is mid-January of this year.

How did Coro Pittsburgh get involved?

Regina Anderson, the former Director of the Regional Internship Center (RIC), requested that Coro, being the parent organization to the RIC, sign on to be a sponsoring organization. The RIC pledged to provide a welcoming and supportive place to work; to offer direct supervision; and to attend a transgender cultural competency training led by a member of the ITL team.

Since January, the RIC and Coro have provided to me direct human resources support, access to trainings, events and resources, as well as enabled my integration into the Coro experience and network.

The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy also applied to be a sponsoring organization. Even though a position at the PPC would have provided an opportunity to work in the field of environmental advocacy and education (which are primary interests of mine) and the opportunity to work under Marijke Hecht, Director of Education, I decided to go with Coro because of it's extensive network in a variety of non-profit and service areas, and because I saw similarities between the opportunity I was given and the internship opportunities I would be working to create and improve as a member of the RIC team.

What have you been working on?

For the majority of my fellowship, I have been working with the Regional Internship Center (RIC) and learning all about social media, the creation of successful internship programs, and how to outreach effectively. I went from just taking notes at the RIC's signature "Creating a Successful Internship Program" workshop to preparing to lead my own on October 19^th at Penn State Fayette. I can see how the process for creating successful internships can be used as model to improve efficiency and sustainability for an organization as a whole. 

More recently, I have been working with Misti McKeehen, Director of Operations & Outreach at Coro, on a series of recommendations to improve LGBT inclusion in the part-time Coro program, Women in Leadership (WIL). Also, I am working on a resource for Coro to share with partner organizations and businesses interested in learning more about LGBT workplace inclusion.

Also, I am working on the Outreach and Action Plan committees for an upcoming conference called Building Change: A Convergence for Social Justice. This conference will occur October 13-15 and it seeks to engage as many people as possible into building a social justice movement throughout southwestern PA. For more information please visit www.buildingchangewpa.org.

One main goal of the conference is to generate discussion and progress around an "Action Plan": a plan to build social justice in our region over the next five years. I thought, why not get this discussion started amongst members of the LGBT community and organizations serving the community in Pittsburgh? In August a group of nearly 60 people met at United Cerebral Palsy to begin generating a vision for the LGBT community. Please contact me at rsorock@coropittsburgh.org for more information or to get involved.

Throughout the fellowship, I have led and co-led trainings and focus groups on transgender awareness and LGBT workplace issues.

What's next for you? What's next for the Initiative for Transgender Leadership?

First of all, my fellowship culminates on Friday November 18^th with my final presentation at the Union Project. This event will be free and open to the public. For more information visit: www.transyouthleaders.blogspot.com. Being the ITL fellow and working with Coro Pittsburgh has helped me build a strong network of people doing great work throughout this region. I feel confident that my experiences in this fellowship put me at a professional advantage and I am excited to think about what's next.

For the ITL, we are exploring a few different ideas including continuing the fellowship program and developing a "mentoring the mentors" program to promote peer-to-peer mentorship among transgender youth. I intend to stay involved with the ITL in the future and I know we will continue to do great things. Please stay in touch by emailing transleadership@gmail.com.

Pittsburgh's QUILTBAG Community 5 year Plan Meeting PART II

Part II of Pittsburgh's QUILTBAG Community 5-year Plan Meeting

Summary of Findings

In regards to the question posed to participants: What is the Pittsburgh-area QUILTBAG community to you? Participants defined our community is a subculture, it is fractured, it is welcoming, it is different groups coming together, it is united by challenges and oppression, it is loosely connected, it is transient, it is Pride, it is our organizations & their programming, it is family/friends, it lacks a geographic center. There was hesitance to even say “community” as there are many communities and they don’t always come together.  Generally, participants expressed dismay and frustration about the extent of divisions within the QUILTBAG community. Divisions that came up: generational, racial, religious, queer men vs. queer women, ally vs. LGBTQ, political, regional, HIV status, economic.

In regards to where we want to see our community in 5 years, participants responded overwhelmingly with more. We want more resources (health, legal, emergency, housing) for youth, older adults, transpeople, sex workers, prison populations, etc. We want those resources to be accessible and up-to-date. We want more collaboration with allies, with a variety of organizations. We want more communication and more support for each other’s events and causes. More organizing around issues that affect some of us so they affect all of us—broadening what it means to be a QUILTBAG issue. For example, why isn’t Jordan Miles a queer issue? Why isn’t Marcellus Shale a queer issue? We want more discussion of, working on and unlearning racism within the community, and we want white people to take the lead more often on making that happen. We want events that are not in bars, substance-free, and welcoming to many different kinds of people within our community. We want Pittsburgh to become a queer destination, especially for young people and artists. We want to see the same enthusiasm about QUILTBAG issues year round and not just during Pride. We want more visibility and more people coming out. We want our allies to be educated. We want service providers, health care providers, and emergency responders to understand our issues. We want a space (preferably a building) that is self-sustaining and stands as a hub for the QUILTBAG community and provides event space, health care, a place to sleep, and youth services. Overall, intersectionality is huge and taking care of our own is huge. We can enact power to create change by unifying and bridging the gaps that divide us.

The Issues Gallery Crawl activity allowed participants to move around and record ideas about various issues apparent in our community. For each issue, there were two columns with something like the following: What is already happening? What needs to happen? That way, we have a space to focus on assets/the current state of things as well as generate ideas for change.

What a Pittsburgh-area QUILTBAG Community 5-Year Plan might look like

• Mission statement (i.e. what the 5-year plan is what it stands for)
• Vision (i.e. our ultimate goal for our community/communities)
• Background and history (i.e. previous plans, progress made, where we go from here)
• Structure of the plan (i.e. continuations committee, how to share the information)
• Themes of change (i.e. intersectionality, collective organizing, expansion of resources)
• Specific goals, steps to get there and timelines to measure success

[All information would be informed by ideas generated by this and future 5-year plan meetings]

Transgender 201 Training 8/4/11

At the beginning of August, Bobby and I had the opportunity to share our knowledge of trans issues with my co-workers: staff at Coro Pittsburgh as well as Public Allies and someone from the Allegheny County Dept. of Human Services.

We presented a PowerPoint, which was a combination of many efforts. In some ways the presentation was similar top the one Mad and I did in March for the Presbyterian Task Force on Ministry with Sexual Minorities. We encouraged participants to take a close look at all of our gender assumptions, how really--no (or very few) people we know actually fit the stereotype of what a man is or what a woman is. We went through the basics: binary vs. continuum, pulling apart gender & sex, pulling apart sexuality & gender identity. We did our best to define who falls under the trans umbrella and who doesn't (this isn't always so clear). We talked about issues that trans people face, and showed profiles of trans celebrities (mostly academic, artistic and/or politically active).

One of my favorite slides is for when we talk about the positives of the trans community--our assets. I can get bummed out talking too much about all the hardships trans folks face, even though sharing that info is very important. I like to show what's so great about us too.

The main activity at the end was breaking into groups to begin to figure out how to create structures in the workplace (policy, procedure, culture, etc.) that support trans inclusion. For example, the Coro offices are located in a large building with many other renters. How do we ensure the bathrooms that we share are safe places for trans folks? What resources do we need to successfully address the need for safe bathrooms? What roadblocks do we foresee and how are we going to work through them?

Overall, I was happy with how the presentation turned out. I'm excited to do more of these (any takers?) especially because of the conversations that get started around trans issues and 'cause we get the chance to lend value to our own experiences as worthy information to share.