Youth Outright WNC

Throughout 2023 Youth Outright hosted 3 weekly virtual after school programs and 12 monthly in-person socials. Our programs are for young lgbtqia+ people ages 11-24, we expanded our service age range in 2022 recognizing a gap in services for young adults and extended the age for in-person and virtual programs as well as college-level gsa visits to accommodate that need. These groups offer Youth peer community & support, educational programs, and leadership development. We provided support to the youth-led gsa clubs in our regional communities and at local schools and hosted our annual community events like queer Youth prom, gsa summit: Youth rising, and stonewall family picnic. We continued our rapid response mini grant, the direct Youth payment program, for queer and trans Youth who need support accessing basic needs such as rent, groceries, utilities and medicine. External growth this year, we also put together a mental health safety plan and crisis plan for Youth to fill out with their therapist, caregivers, and/or supportive community in their life. We had a large focus on rural outreach in 2023, and held monthly socials, visited gsas, and did community advocacy work in buncombe, catawba, henderson, jackson, mitchell and yancey counties. According to our givebutter attendance and discord intake, we reached Youth living in 9 towns across WNC. In the spring of 2023, we held our first gsa summit since the pandemic hit. Over 80 attendees engaged in peer learning and leadership development for social change. A growth point since the gsa summit in 2019 was that most of the presentations were held by high school students rather than adult community members and all high school and college student presenters were compensated for their time and talents. The gsa visits this year were expansive and tailored to the needs of each gsa with program topics ranging from power mapping, gsa leadership models, lgbtqia+ history, queer sex ed, and coming out 101. With our expansion of age range to 24, we also held programs at 2 collegiate gsas for the first time. This years Youth attendees of the stonewall picnic created a Youth pride committee and for the first time in blue ridge pride history a Youth section of pride was created. The Youth pride section included our organization along with other Youth serving orgs. The Youth also organized three additional tents including a free art making station, community resource station, and a sensory safe space. Internal growth in july of 2023 staff and the board of directors convened for our yearly leadership retreat. While last year focused on mission and vision, this year we mapped out a 3 year strategic plan with support from colibri consulting. We hired three new Youth staff to be part of our 2 year Youth fellowship program. General engagement in 2023 Youth checked into weekly programs 659 times, and we engaged 60 new Youth who had never been to a Youth Outright program before. We held our annual queer Youth prom with the most attendance it's ever received with over 200 queer and trans Youth. Our gsa summit had over 80 attendees with 6 highschool student presenters and 3 college student presenters. Our stonewall pride picnic was an intergenerational mix of approximately 20 Youth, their caregivers, and queer elder community members. The Youth pride committee included 5 Youth and 4 adult caregivers which engaged hundreds of people during blue ridge pride.