seacoast outright

Working to ensure equal opportunity for all youth, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

GLBTQ Youth Support Groups

The youth that Seacoast Outright works with have a variety of needs, the first of which is safety. Our youth support groups are safe environments where youth have a chance to be honest and ask other youth for advice and support. The groups meet every Friday night from 7pm to 9pm in Portsmouth, and each meeting is facilitated by two trained adult facilitators who help the youth establish guidelines to keep the conversation focused. We also provide information and resources through our resource library and by keeping our facilitators up to date on the latest information about youth development, health care, and local resources. Because the facilitators at Seacoast Outright are not counselors, we have a list of local mental health professionals (therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists) that we can give to youth for help on issues that are beyond the scope of the youth support meeting. Seacoast Outright is not a counseling service: We focus on safety, education, and accurate information, and we refer those with counseling issues to professional therapists.

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Education and Community Outreach

Seacoast Outright works with the people who can best support sexual minority youth: those who are in the schools, families, and communities of Seacoast Outright youth. We conduct workshops and educational programs in a variety of settings, with the goal of creating support for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and questioning youth in the environments where the live. We have facilitated hundreds of such discussions among educators, community members, and parents in Seacoast New Hampshire and southern Maine. Usually, these workshops are an integrated part of a larger curriculum within the environment. These workshops can lead to longer-term commitments from the organizations involved to be more supportive and welcoming of all youth.

Seacoast Outright offers workshops, presentations, and in-services to agencies, churches, conferences. Seacoast Outright has given presentations to high school classes, a regional school system's parent education day, a local hospital, a state-wide conference for helping-service professionals, among others. Seacoast Outright's goals are empowerment of GLBTQ youth, and education of the community in which GLBTQ youth live. Education includes alerting and informing those who work with youth about the existence and unique needs of GLBTQ youth. If suicide is the last refuge of the powerless, the direct services to youth are seen as empowering. To the extent that these youth are able to take action with regard to their own feelings and meet their own needs, they are empowering. Rather than encouraging a particular sexual identity, Seacoast Outright aimes to foster a positive self-image for all youth. The support group and the social and education activities provide GLBTQ youth with a safe and supportive environment in which to explore questions about their sexuality, learn about making responsible choices, and develop their own strengths and capabilities.

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Youth Leadership and Development

The second need we try to address is the need for youth to feel empowered to change their environments in positive ways. We support youth by providing them with information and leadership skills. Youth use these skills to ask for what they need from their schools, families, and communities. Some Seacoast Outright youth go through training to go out and speak in their schools and communities about prejudice and violence prevention. Others get involved in community service projects to help address topics ranging from dating violence to AIDS. Others simply begin to trust their own voices when talking to familiy and friends.

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last updated: 08/09/2004
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