Organizational Ally to Queer Youth – Awardee:
QUEER AND TRANS YOUTH COUNCIL OF SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
The Queer and Trans Youth Council of Santa Cruz County, a program of The Queer Youth Task Force, provides local LGBTQIA+ youth with leadership skills and an opportunity to serve the local LGBTQIA+ community. Councilmembers work together to identify needs, plan, and implement projects to directly impact their community. The 2019-2020 council created and presented a training for school staff, and when shelter-in-place went into effect, they converted the training to a virtual platform to ensure educators still had access to the information. The 2020-2021 council meets weekly online and have identified the need for more resources for closeted youth and are creating a website designed to support closeted youth. The Queer and Trans Youth Council is a powerful example of LGBTQIA+ youth leadership in our county.
Organizational Ally to Queer Youth – Nominees:
PARENT/GUARDIAN & ADULT ALLIES SUMMIT: UNDERSTANDING GENDER
The Understanding Gender Summit, a collaboration between TransFamilies of Santa Cruz County and Gender Spectrum, and a program of the Safe Schools Project, is a free summit that supports families and adult allies in understanding gender diversity and helps them create safe and supportive environments for youth. The Summit presented their third event and first virtual event via Zoom in fall 2020, which included simultaneous Spanish interpretation and a workshop presented in Spanish, to ensure accessibility for Spanish speaking attendees. The Summit organizers created and delivered goodie bags of trans flags, buttons, and handouts to all attendees to give them a tangible connection to the event. The Understanding Gender Summit makes our community safer for trans and gender diverse youth by giving adults in their lives tools to support them and help them thrive.
NEW VOICES – AN LGBTQQAI+ YOUTH PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
New Voices, a collaboration between West Creative Performing Arts and The Santa Cruz Art League, is an LGBTQQIA+ Youth Performance Program serving youth ages fifteen to eighteen in Santa Cruz County. Under the direction of Angela Ciandro, New Voices engages LGBTQQAI+ youth learn original performance making skills whilein building essentail life skills such as communication, self-reflection, and critical thinking as they explore their queer identities in a safe community-based environment. During it’s first year, New Voices held a Queer Cultural Heritage Exchange to build cross-generational community between participants and a panel of thriving queer community members. New Voices’ 2020 original youth performance showcase debuted live via Zoom, reaching a large audience of local queer community members, many of whom were otherwise isolated from a safe queer space due to the Covid-19 pandemic.