If This Gets 1000 Notes In The Next 6 Hours I Will Hand It In As The Final Part Of My Advocacy Assignment!!!1!1!!

If this gets 1000 notes in the next 6 hours I will hand it in as the final part of my advocacy assignment!!!1!1!!

And while I have your attention, here’s some information that I will also be including on the poster (please note that all of this information is Canada-specific):

- 25-40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ2S+ (more research is needed to get a more solid stat, so while we’re asking for resources, let’s get some research going too!!)

- In 2015 (the most recent data I could get), about 3% of the population identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/dai/smr08/2015/smr08_203_2015#a3). It should be noted that this statistic is about people aged 18-59, while ‘youth’ is often defined as younger than 20 or 25, so it’s not especially representative in that respect, but it’s the only stat I could find. Also, although this number doesn’t include all the identities in the LGBTQ2S+ community, it’s still drastically lower than the amount of LGBTQ2S+ youth living on the streets, so it’s clear that LGBTQ2S+ people are way over-represented in the homeless population.

- Many LGBTQ2S+ youth face discrimination in shelters, and would often rather sleep on the streets than put themselves at risk by going to a shelter where they don’t know if they’ll be accepted. Shelters should provide training to their staff so that LGBTQ2S+ youth don’t have to be afraid to go to shelters.

- While there are some shelters that claim to be supportive of LGBTQ2S+ youth, I am only aware of 2 in all of Canada that are specifically for LGBTQ2S+ youth (Egale Center: https://www.egalecentre.ca/updates , and YMCA Sprott House: https://ymcagta.org/news/ymca-sprott-house-announces-lgbtq2sa-youth-housing-services ; this article mentions that there are ‘a handful of other’ programs like these in Canada, but I haven’t found these programs anywhere else in my research. Please add them if you know more). Both of these are located in Toronto.

- Creating LGBTQ2s+ youth shelters is definitely necessary to help all the LGBTQ2s+ youth who are homeless right now, but it is only a band-aid solution. One of the main reasons they are homeless is because of rejection from their families. Long-term, we should also be continuing to educate people on LGBTQ2S+ identities and how to be caring, accepting people so that LGBTQ2S+ youth can feel safe in their homes!

Feel free to add more information!

Source: This

Found the helpers

Good news amidst all this chaos

if any of you are ever wondering what engineering students are like, one time i found a fire escape exit sign for sale at a garage sale and gave it to my engineering friend and not a single person will believe her that it's a birthday gift because engineers are notorious sign thieves, among many, many other baffling things

there's no better time to do everything you've ever needed or wanted to do than when you're procrastinating on the one thing that you really need to be doing right now