April 10, 2002

Pride for Youth (PFY) was the recipient of a grant of $5,000 from the Gay and Lesbian Foundation of Long Island. GALFOLI made the grant to enhance PFY's ability to hire a part-time outreach worker (OW) to meet the special needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth of color (African American and Latino).

Long Island Crisis Center's Pride for Youth Project provides education, outreach and supportive services to LGBTQ youth. This project was founded in 1993 in order to address the paucity of resources for these young people of Long Island. Among Pride for Youth's accomplishments, the Project set up the first-ever suburban "Coffeehouse" for LGBTQ teenagers in the nation. The Project also designed an educational theater program utilizing adolescent peer educators in order to educate young people about HIV and related health problems. PFY recognizes that LGBTQ youth represent a disadvantaged population that finds itself at-risk for suicide, substance abuse, homelessness, and HIV/AIDS infection, among other problems.

For this new project, PFY will focus their education and outreach activities on the at-risk communities of Hempstead, Roosevelt, New Cassel, and Freeport. The main goal will be to create a support and advocacy group for LGBTQ youth of color that will provide health education, meet youths' needs for socialization, and empower them to advocate for themselves in their communities. In order to create and sustain this group, the OW will need to conduct an aggressive outreach campaign, reaching out to potential group members and educating their communities. This outreach will also raise awareness of PFY's other services so that LGBTQ youth of color have greater access to these unique programs.

LGBTQ youth from communities of color face even more complicated challenges as they negotiate the coming out process. LGBTQ youth of color are at particular risk of victimization, negotiating both racial and sexual stigmas. In addition, recent research documents that young gay and bisexual men of color (primarily African American and Latino) are at disproportionate risk of HIV infection. As many as one out of three young gay African American men are HIV+. There is also evidence that LGBTQ youth of color are at greater risk for both suicide and substance abuse than their white counterparts. GALFOLI looks forward to continuing to assist PFY in reaching out to Long Island's LGBTQ youth of color.

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