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Our mission is to provide support, advocacy, and education to youth between the ages of
13 and 23 who are affected by issues of gender identity, gender expression and *** orientation.
That's sort of the tag line. What that really means, I think, is that we try to be youth-driven
and youth-led as much as possible and to provide a voice to those LGBT youth who don't get
to have their own voice.
I have been involved for about 3 years now and it was sort of word of mouth from a friend.
I was asking where he was going and he had said, "I'm going to a place called YPI," and
I followed him and I've been here ever since.
I didn't know that I was part of the LGBT community yet. I didn't know what my label
was yet, but I felt this vibe and I knew that these people were like me, so that's why I
kept on coming back.
I've been involved with YPI since, I believe, my freshmen or sophomore year. I'm in twelfth
grade now, so I think it's almost four years.
I absolutely love YPI. It's a good place for me to be myself.
There is a survey that the Centers for Disease Control puts out every two years called the
Youth Risk Behavior Survey and that looks at 24 categories of risky behavior and youth
that self identify as something other than straight are more likely to engage in 22 of
the 24 categories of risk. So just numerically, we know that these youth need to be supported.
Well, if it wasn't for the staff of YPI, to be honest, I'd probably be on the street doing
crazy things. It's taught me to be positive and do productive
things and all that stuff There's been difficult times in my life, like really hard times,
where YPI has came through and helped me.
Back when I was in high school, I was really depressed and each and every day, I'd see
staff members doing awesome things. They change lives even in small, little ways.
One thing that we do is OUTSpoken, which is our leadership and advocacy group. It's a
way, I think, that youth who come here can get connected at a little deeper level and
really challenge their own thoughts about identity and privilege and oppression and
how all of those systems affect them and come together in their identity and how that's
layered with their class and their race and their other experiences and other identity
factors, not just their sexuality.
t's really important to provide a space where youth can build community and meet friends
and really sort of discover who they want to be in a safe, confidential space where
they're not going to be judged.
I think it helps other youth because it's an open program. I was just talking to one
kid out there who was telling me about how it was difficult it was for him to come out
where he comes from because he can't be open to his friends and all that stuff because
dangerous things would happen, but when he comes to YPI he could be open to everyone
here even if it's just a stranger coming off the street.
We live in a heteronormative society. Sex education in schools and public education
system is really designed around that. It's important to make sure that youth have a voice
out in the community, but also that they have the education and support that they need here.
I think we just generally promote health and well-being as much as we possibly can.
We're the only organization in the state that's doing the work that we do. I think that it's
crucial to have the support for youth, I mean really believe in the earliest education and
prevention measures as possible.
For the most part, organizations don't do a lot of both direct service and sort of leadership
or advocacy or that piece, that it's one or the other; either you come there to access
your service or you come there to learn and grow and develop and we try to do both here,
which I think is unique.
There are many things that I never thought I can do and I did it because of YPI.
Just being here and seeing people interact, people smile and people do positive things,
it makes you want to do positive things and it gets you out of that negative vibe. It
makes you want to be happy. It makes you have a life changing effect on yourself and others.
It makes me want to do something amazing.
There's lots of inspirations on a daily basis. I'm happy to be here.
I think I've learned in the past four years that part of working with teenagers is learning
to find gratification in the little moments.
I know that we are making changes one person at a time as well as on a political level
and the social level and by raising awareness in a broader sense in Rhode Island.