Raising Voices: Strategies to Understand, Respect, and Make Heard the Experiences and Perspectives of LGBTQA+ Marginalized Youth

• In Event: Education Research Service Project Invited Poster Session

Abstract

The Prism Youth Community, a youth-led organization of/for LGBTQ kids from south central Indiana, engages in cultural competency trainings for educators and other youth-serving professionals. The Education and Training (E&T) Committee of Prism is responsible for preparing, planning and delivering a variety of educational trainings related to the needs and experiences of queer youth. The youth-educators draw on their own experiences and engage in their own reviews of the literature to create the trainings. There is a need for more training and materials relevant to the experiences and needs of marginalized youth within the LGBTQ community, for example, transgender kids in foster care. Prism’s E&T committee will conduct interviews and focus groups with more vulnerable members of the larger LGBTQ community and create materials that the youth educators can share through their educational trainings. The E&T committee has already been working with the PIs to evaluate their trainings. This project will draw on this relationship as it prepares youth to engage in direct research aimed at sharing the un-voiced experiences of marginalized youth with social workers, psychologists, teachers, and others involved with youth. The materials created will be shared at a community-wide education event hosted by Prism E&T.

Author

• Barbara Dennis, Indiana University