2008 Awards

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11th Annual QYLA

Saturday April 26th

Queer Youth Leadership Award Awardees:

Danielle Elizalde

Watsonville High School Student

Danielle Elizalde has shown extraordinary commitment to social change and creating a culture of tolerance and respect. A senior at Watsonville High, Danielle’s long list of accomplishments include: serving in the leadership of her school’s very active Gay Straight Alliance for three years, this year as president; being a member of Watsonville’s first PRIDE committee, representing the perspective of the community’s queer youth; volunteering as a Triangle Speaker to help students at various high schools understand her experience as a young lesbian; participating in various awareness campaigns at her school, such as “What’s in a Name?” and “Day of Silence”; attending the Youth Empowerment Summit in San Francisco for the last three years in order to improve her leadership skills to create social change. As president of her school’s GSA, Danielle has played an active role in involving STRANGE and Triangle Speakers on campus, as well as reaching out to the new GSA at Pajaro Valley High School. Even though Danielle has experienced significant homophobia at home, she’s had the confidence to be out, proud of her identity, and an excellent role model for other queer youth. Danielle is a valuable youth leader in her community.

Omar Fuentes

Pajaro Valley High School Student

Omar is one of the principal actors who mobilized to found the Pajaro Valley High School Gay Straight Alliance this year. Omar has been very active in recruiting membership for the GSA and has been the key instrumental layer in recruiting adult advisors. Omar is

also the key member with institutional memory of what kinds of events and actions have been organized by last year’s GSA club. Omar has also been instrumental in recruiting allies to join the GSA. He stands out for being outspoken on LGBTIQ issues both inside and out of the classroom. He fights daily battles to confront stereotypes and hatred, and is a role model to everyone in the group to be out and proud — he has led the way. He is a motivational leader who can rally support for action, participation and fundraising. Omar has consistently been the person who distributes flyers and posters at upcoming meetings, and he has distributed permission slips and organized student permission slips for events even for events that he himself has not been able to attend. He is inquisitive, courageous and motivational. Omar was also instrumental in organizing the PVHS GSA’s participation in club day. He has shown outstanding leadership on the campus around LGBTIQ awareness.

Sarananda Osheim

Harbor High School Student

Sarananda Osheim has worked tirelessly with adults and other youth to forge a unified community of queer youth from throughout the county. After coming out to her friends and family, last year Sarananda attended the Western Regional UCLGBTIQAA Conference where she participated in numerous workshops to develop her skills to lead and organize a more broad-based queer youth community. Using the skills she developed at the conference, she moved beyond the GSA at her own school and forged alliances with members of queer youth leaders throughout the county. With those alliances in place, she spearheaded local involvement at the Youth Empowerment Summit in San Francisco, an event where hundreds of queer youth from throughout the Bay Area met to discuss issues affecting the community. She also organized and performed outreach for a holiday social at the Lionel Cantú Center at UC Santa Cruz. She also spoke recently on KZSC radio about building a safe place for youth to be open and honest about their identities. Because the queer youth community is constantly changing as young people transition into the next phase of their lives, there’s always a need for fresh leadership. Sarananda has stepped into that role with passion.

Laurel Stern

Santa Cruz High School Student

Laurel Stern is a beacon of pride as a gender-variant person wherever ze (Laurel’s preferred gender pronoun) goes. At 16, Laurel is the co-president of the Rainbow Alliance at Santa Cruz High School. Yearly, ze organizes the Day of

Silence, and last year the alliance included an observance of Transgender Day of Remembrance, which involved reading the names of hundreds of victims of violence against transgender people. Recently, ze spent the fall-winter semester living in La Chorrera, Panama, as an exchange student where ze quietly provided information, networking, and support to the extremely closeted queer youth that ze met there. Living in Panama gave hir a painful but vital introduction to the gender roles that are the norm in much of our world, and the work that needs to be done to break beyond them. Laurel also volunteered last summer at the Drop-In Center of the Santa Cruz AIDS Project, where ze worked with youth and outreach, including walking around downtown Santa Cruz with another volunteer, offering condoms, toothbrushes, needle exchanges, and other supplies to the homeless. A victim of bipolar disorder, Laurel characteristically pushed onward and now manages hir illness and leads a full and active life marked by perseverance and passion.

Queer Youth Leadership Award Nominees:

Alayna Manor

Santa Cruz High School Student

Alayna Manor is a passionate and active supporter of social justice issues affecting our community. A straight-A student at Santa Cruz High School, as well as an artist and musician, Alayna has volunteered tirelessly at the Santa Cruz AIDS Project for nearly two years, taking on numerous roles and increasing responsibility. At school, Alayna recognized a need for HIV education and prevention, so she founded the first-ever HIV/AIDS Awareness Club at SCHS. As a part of her efforts, she organized and carried out with her club a food drive that brought in more than $500 worth of food and personal items for SCAP’s food pantry. Also, in honor of World AIDS Day, Alayna and her club mates attained administration approval and passed out 800 condoms along with educational materials to her fellow students, working with SCAP and county members to gather supplies for the event. Alayna is also active in her high school’s Women’s Honor Society and the Rainbow Alliance groups, and she recently served as moderator for the “Dream Room” event this year’s Santa Cruz County GSA Summit. Her club and other extra curricular activities as SCHS and in the community all reflect her passion to explore issues of social justice, and her strong desire to make a difference.

Gilberto Mendoza

Harbor High School Student

Gilberto has been an active queer leader in our community. After attending a Gay Straight Alliance summit in San Jose, he was inspired to plan the first-ever Santa Cruz County GSA summit where students from across the county came together and discussed their GSAs and what kinds of changes they would like to see. Although students had discussed a desire for a local GSA summit in the past, it took Gilberto’s work ethic and can-do attitude to make it a reality. Part of Gilberto’s vision for the local summit was developing ways to move beyond the isolation of various GSAs at local schools, and develop a framework for GSAs to connect and leverage each other’s energy. As part of Gilberto’s vision, the summit also included a “dream room” workshop to envision the future of the queer youth community in Santa Cruz County, as well as a speech by a former ASB president at a local high school who discussed activism and leadership in the queer youth community. Gilberto is a role model for other youth in our community.

Yahaira Marquez

Pajaro Valley High School Student

Yahaira Marquez has been a strong leader and organizer within the Pajaro Valley High School Gay Straight Alliance. She was instrumental in the club’s recognition on-campus as an authorized student club. Yahaira has served as a liaison between the GSA and the administration, and was instrumental in securing the GSA’s participation in Club Day; she worked very hard to raise awareness about the club. Known for being responsible and articulate, the other club members look to her for support and guidance for official communication to teachers and administrators on campus. Other GSA club members see her as a go-to person, someone who can help them get big things done. Yahaira is also a top student, a talented poet, and a strong writer and vocalist. Yahaira shows great promise not only as a leader in queer circles, but also as a queer leader in groups that are not specifically LGBTIQ, such as Spaces for Youth slam poetry and performance. Yahaira is also known for being highly organized, appreciative, willing to take on whatever is asked of her, and has great inter-personal and communication skills.

Ally to Queer Youth Award Awardee:

Joe Eugene

Triangle Speakers Board Member and Panelist

Joe Eugene has shown dedication to advancing the mission and goals of Triangle Speakers, both as a speaker and a member of its board of directors. Joe was trained as a Triangle Speaker in 2003, two years before his retirement from a thirty-year career with the County of Santa Cruz. Since retirement he has been exceptionally active as a speaker. Impressively, Joe has spoken as a Triangle Speaker panelist at over 200 presentations in schools around the county since 2003, reaching over 6,000 individuals, the majority from county K-12 classrooms. Through his personal story, Joe strives to reduce homophobia in the schools and ensure that GLBT youth are safe in Santa Cruz County. Joe joined the board of directors of Triangle Speakers in 2006, where he has made a special commitment to the youth component of the organization’s programs, encouraging the board to support programs that spread awareness of queer youth issues and to create a positive atmosphere for youth volunteers in the organization. Joe has worked tirelessly to establish new and strengthen existing collaborations with local school teachers and administrators, as well as train new volunteers to become Triangle Speakers, thus building alliances and support for queer youth by other members of the community.

Ally to Queer Youth Award Nominees:

Bekki Bolthouse

Pajaro Valley High School Teacher in Training

Bekki Bolthouse believes strongly that adult allies to queer youth have a duty to offer support, and she lives by that principle. A graduate student working as a teacher in training at Pajaro Valley High School, Bekki gladly accepted the role of advisor to the school’s newly formed Gay Straight Alliance. Because she stood out to the students as someone supportive of GLBT issues, the students who were in the process of forming the GSA asked her to be their advisor. Since becoming the group’s advisor, she has been very active, and volunteers her time well beyond the requirements of her position. Last year, she facilitated transportation for the members of the GSA to the San Jose GSA Summit to help the youth develop their leadership skills, as well as to the Billy De Frank Center’s Valentine’s Dance. Bekki is particularly passionate about ending isolation among queer youth, and has played a crucial role in growing the ranks of the school’s GSA with queer youth and straight allies. She has also been instrumental in collaborating with the YWCA and other local ally organizations. The youth at PVHS and their GSA are off to an auspicious start, thanks in large part to Bekki’s support.

Carla Gonzalez

Friday Night Live Chapter, YWCA Program Coordinator

Carla Gonzalez has gone above and beyond her official role at the YWCA, working countless unpaid hours to support queer youth. As the program coordinator of the Watsonville chapter of Friday Night Live, a drug and alcohol prevention program, Carla has worked to build a safe space for queer youth, a population at statistically higher risk for addiction as a result of homophobia. Also, Carla has collaborated with the Pajaro Valley High School Gay Straight Alliance from its inception, as well as the Watsonville High School GSA, to support awareness on campus, helping facilitate meetings, events, and field trips. Carla was the key adult who organized PVHS student participation in the recent GSA summit. Carla has been particularly effective as an advocate of youth empowerment, an operational model that focuses on providing youth the leadership and organizing skills necessary to create the change they desire, as opposed to relying on adults to create those opportunities for them. Frequently, Carla organizes transportation for youth to various events, such as conferences, workshops, social events, and meetings.

Mark Knapp

Soquel High School Teacher

Mark Knapp understands the importance of having a visible, proactive approach to creating a culture of respect, tolerance, and support for queer youth. A health teacher at Soquel High School for over ten years, Mark has served as an ally for queer youth by stopping class whenever he hears a discriminatory comment, working to change the classroom and campus safety level for LGBTIQ students and faculty, and by directly supporting LGBTIQ youth at times of personal crisis. Also, because for many queer youth the high school years are a time of struggle to recognize their identity in the face of a culture that isn’t always supportive, Mark makes a point of including positive images of LGBTIQ people in his curriculum by means of posters, stories, Triangle Speakers panels, movies, and class discussions. He also keeps a small library of queer-positive books to lend out to questioning youth. Mark’s commitment to being supportive of queer and questioning youth gives students in his school at least one place where they can feel safe to share their struggles.

Bill McCabe

Assistant Director of Youth Services, A Program of the Santa Cruz County Counseling Center

Bill McCabe has been instrumental in creating a more centralized support for queer youth throughout Santa Cruz County. In his role as Assistant Director of Youth Services, a program of the Santa Cruz Community Counseling Center, Bill supervised STRANGE, a program that supports queer youth throughout Santa Cruz County by creating opportunities for socializing, networking, and activism. Bill worked to keep the program funded during lean times, and fought to increase its funding from a variety of sources with some significant recent success. Thanks to Bill, STRANGE now has a 25 hour per week coordinator, up from 8 hours per week. He also trained and included queer youth on the hiring committee for this position. Bill is working to build collaboration between the Queer Youth Task Force, The Diversity Center, and the other organizations that serve queer youth in the county with the hopes of providing a comprehensive set of services to youth countywide. As part of this collaboration, Bill is working to create a pool of volunteers that will provide transportation for queer youth and allies to local and regional events. He has also supported the creation of a countywide queer youth database to keep youth informed of the events, activities, and services available.

Tracey Palmer

Aptos High School Teacher

Tracey Palmer, a social science teacher at Aptos High School, has been an active supporter for queer youth in her classroom, on campus, and in the community of Aptos. As the advisor to the school’s Gay Straight Alliance for more than five years, Tracey has been a key advocate for the GSA’s campaign for civil rights. In her classroom, Tracey uses a discussion of same-sex marriage as an example of a minority working to ensure its civil rights in society, asking students to complete an assignment comparing the fight for same-sex marriage to other civil rights movements. By incorporating these ideas into her own curriculum, she not only creates an empowering atmosphere for queer and questioning youth, she also educates other students about the struggles of LGBTIQ people and the importance of their civil rights. Tracey often advocates to the administration to support measures against harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ people. She drove the GSA's float in the Aptos Homecoming Parade, showing her support and offering an opportunity for allies and queer youth to be out in both the school and in the community of Aptos.

Leslie Smith

Aptos Junior High School Teacher

Leslie Smith is a model of how one teacher can influence a school’s culture, making it a safer place for queer and questioning youth. As an out lesbian mother at Aptos Junior High School, Leslie’s contribution has been multi-faceted. In the classroom, being out has resulted in frequent informal conversations with students, which helps break down stereotypes as students experience Leslie as an individual who happens to be lesbian. Leslie also includes books by gay authors and with gay themes in her classroom library, and she acknowledges non-traditional families when introducing “la familia” vocabulary in her beginning Spanish class. Leslie served as the Gay Straight Alliance advisor at her school, which gave many queer and questioning students an opportunity to explore their identity in a safe place. To raise awareness among the school staff of harassment of queer youth by other students, Leslie has spoken at staff meetings about students’ use of homophobic slurs, and has received staff support for school-wide enforcement. Leslie also co-authored The Lesbian in Front of the Classroom: Writings by Lesbian Teachers. As Leslie’s experience demonstrates, the efforts of one person can be instrumental in creating a culture of understanding, acceptance, and respect in a school community.

Leila Vega

Former Queer Youth Scene Program Coordinator

Leila Vega has helped create a consistent and supportive environment for queer youth at the Diversity Center, Santa Cruz County’s GLBT community center. After being an intern at STRANGE, the queer youth empowerment organization in Santa Cruz County, Leila helped start the Queer Youth Scene Program at The Diversity Center, a safe space for queer youth and allies to socialize, discuss upcoming community events, participate in arts and crafts, combat homophobia and discrimination in the community, and help build a queer-friendly community. Spaces like these may not directly interrupt oppression and harassment, but they provide a healing opportunity and help develop the strength and resolve for queer youth to face the challenging environments they move through. After graduating from UCSC, Leila continued to host the Queer Youth Scene as a volunteer. Leila also helped organize the Queer Camp through STRANGE, which brought queer youth and allies from low-income families to a safe space to network and to discuss tactics for overcoming discrimination. At the PRIDE event, Leila spoke to promote the Queer Youth Scene and staffed STRANGE’s table. She has demonstrated incredible commitment to youth attending numerous events and activities and by continuing to produce the Scene long after her internship was over.

Organizational Ally to Queer Youth Award Awardee:

YWCA of Watsonville

The YWCA of Watsonville has a long and deep history of being a visible and strong ally to queer youth, and is a hub of financial, logistical, and volunteer support for several queer youth–related organizations. The YWCA of Watsonville sponsors LyLyA (Latinas y Lesbianas Aliadas), a program that provides a safe, educational and social space for Latina women and girls. Another organization sponsored by the YWCA [verify] is PFLAG Watsonville, the local chapter of an organization that provides support for parents and friends of lesbian and gay youth. Recognizing the increased risk among queer youth to become addicted to drugs and alcohol, the YWCA also sponsors and hosts the weekly Friday Night Live club, a drug and alcohol prevention and resistance program for queer youth. [queer youth only?] The YWCA also makes its meeting space available for queer youth meetings and social events, and frequently coordinates transportation for youth to attend youth-empowering events throughout the Bay Area. Although the YWCA of Watsonville’s primary mission isn’t specifically targeted to support LGBTIQ or youth issues, its staff and leadership have consistently and frequently demonstrated their unambiguous commitment empowering queer youth and to fighting gender- and sexual identity-based oppression.

QYLA 2008 Awards