- Hi everybody. I'm so excited.
I'm here at South By Southwest,
but that's not why I'm excited.
I'm excited because Twitter, once again,
did the magic of connecting me to Jama,
who's the project director of Forty?
- Forty to None.
- Forty to None, which I've
been following for a while
and is a wonderful organization,
fighting for LGBT rights for
our homeless youth friends.
- Yeah.
- And oh my gosh, I'm
so honored to meet you.
- Thanks. It's great to meet you too.
- Tell me about your organization.
- Alright, so I run the
Forty to None Project,
which is a part of True Colors Fund
and our name comes from the statistic
that up to 40% experiencing homelessness
are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender.
So, we work to bring an end to
that disproportionate representation.
- Awesome. In what areas?
I mean, what areas are
your specific focus?
- So, we work broad-based
public education,
we want to build awareness about the issue
because a lot of people
don't know about it.
- Right.
- We work on advocacy efforts,
mostly at the federal level,
through a legislative advocacy agenda
and within the federal administration.
We do research, we have a
couple of research projects.
We survey service providers to understand
their challenges and experiences
working with LGBT youth
and we do capacity building
work for providers,
so that we take the work that
we do around equal rights
and translate that so that
it equals equal justice
for young people day to day.
- What's your biggest obstacle?
- Oh wow, that one caught me off guard.
- I'm good at that.
- You are good at that.
- And I waited till
the big, noisy whatever
moved on away, so welcome
to South By Southwest.
- Hi.
- [Female] How are you?
- Good how are you?
Our biggest obstacle
is, I think our biggest
obstacles may be combating myths.
I think that's part of it, so...
- Biggest segway invite ever,
'cause that's where I was going,
what's the biggest myths
that we need to shatter?
- Oh, okay. Myths that
LGBT youth are equal,
which is not true.
Myths that parents no
longer reject their...
- Explain that. Let's unpack that.
What do you mean by it?
- So, what I mean by that is that there's
a myth that because there's been success
in the movement for marriage
equality, for example,
that everything's fine, everything's fine.
Right?
But, that doesn't touch youth
experiencing homelessness.
Actually, they could sort
of care less about marriage
at this point, because they
need access to basic needs.
- They're still surviving.
- Yeah, that fight doesn't
translate to everyone
and those wins don't necessarily equal
more accepting families or systems
that our young people interact with.
- One of the biggest issues,
from my understanding,
correct me if I'm wrong, is
families kicking the kid out.
- Yeah, yeah.
So, that is the most
frequently cited reason
for their homelessness, is
identity-based family rejection.
- Identity-based family rejection.
That, I mean, ahh, ahh!
- Yes. Exactly.
And I would also want
to mention that we also,
for young people that are
already involved in systems,
like juvenile justice or child welfare,
that they're also systems
that aren't necessarily
responsive to their needs, that they feel
they get pushed out of
and that we can't separate
a conversation about
poverty from homelessness,
pretty much ever.
Right, access to resources and funds.
So that definitely plays a role in it,
but the piece about being
rejected based solely
on your identity is super important
and unique factor for LGBT youth.
- Okay, so we've established
one of the biggest myths,
we've established that they are different
and so they need different
solutions and services.
- Yep.
- What are they?
- So one, there's a specific
pathway to prevention
if we know that one of the primary reasons
for their homelessness is rejection.
- Really?
- Identity-based rejection.
- And explain that. Unpack that.
- Because then if we know that people
are ending up on the street, LGBT youth
are ending up on the
street because systems
and individual people say,
you can't be like that
and live here, than we've
got a lot of education
to do for those communities
and those systems
and those people, right.
Because for some, that's
the reason they're homeless.
- So, you're trying one
of the first priorities is reconnection?
- One of the first priorities for us,
I think is prevention,
which is around education
and then connection, we think
connection is important,
but, we think about
reconnection to the family
if it's safe and then
reconnection to community
and family network.
So, who a young person thinks
and identifies as family.
Not necessarily mom and dad,
'cause that might not be...
- I get it. There's no
Leave it to Beaver anymore.
You know, the ideal family
that we all grew up with on TV?
To me, the community
was Alcoholics Anonymous
that helped me get off the street.
- Yeah, and for some people,
for some LGBT young people,
it may also be Alcoholics Anonymous,
for some it may be the
House and Ballroom Scene,
for some it may be school,
for some it may be church.
We have to ask them what those systems,
or people, or places are.
- I fully understand it.
I try to keep these short.
I could talk to you all day.
I know you gotta do too.
Gosh, you have a wonderful smile.
So, how can people watching,
both straight allies,
the LGBT community, how can they help you
help our kids?
- Okay, well they can get involved
and one really clear way
to start getting involved
is to join our Forty to None network.
It's fortytonone.org/network,
'cause the network
is connecting people across sectors,
across the country that are interested in
and invested in this issue.
So that's a first step, number one.
Number two, I would say,
get involved in your local community.
Find out who's doing what
at home, on the ground
and support them.
- Very cool. Very cool.
Thank you very much for talking to me.
Please, this is an important issue.
Support, support tomorrow's future
is the kids on the streets today.
We gotta get them off the streets.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Awesome.
- Thank you. That was great.
