Mountain Meadow Programs: Keeping it Real
2009 Milestones
Keeping It Real, Mountain Meadow’s young speakers program, took off this year! Aware of the program’s potential, Mountain Meadow’s board and staff made a strategic decision to develop the program. We anticipated that 2009 would be primarily a planning year, but the response from the community was so positive and so swift that we implemented trainings and events and got speakers speaking at even major, well attended events within months!
Building Infrastructure
- Mountain Meadow hired Carolyn T. Thompson, Mountain Meadow’s former Executive Director, to design and run the program. Her knowledge of the organization and the community, her strong relationship with Mountain Meadow’s families, and her facilitation and training skills make her the ideal person for the job.
- Working with Steve Duffy, Executive Director, program goals and phases were created and specific projects to obtain the goals were undertaken. A “good idea” quickly transformed into a good program with concrete projects, target audiences, and written training programs for interested youth and their families.
- The pilot “tabling training” was extremely well received. Nineteen youth and adults participated. They enjoyed the training and set out, prepared to represent Mountain Meadow at Pride and other community events.
Outreach and Networking
- Formal and informal partnerships are essential to Keeping It Real’s growth and success as a program. We have joined the LGBT Schools Coalition, have been in regular contact with the Bryson Institute and Mazzoni Center’s Safe Schools programs, and are forming relationship with the Human Rights Campaign’s “Welcoming Schools” elementary school curriculum program. Longtime partners, like PFP Philadelphia Family Pride and COLAGE, are aware of the program as well.
- Keeping It Real contacted nearly 100 welcoming and affirming (LGBTQ positive) religious organizations in Philadelphia and Washington, DC and introduced the program to all of the Philadelphia area high school Gay-Straight Alliances.
- Youth and their parents represented Mountain Meadow at over a dozen pride events in Pennsylvania, Washington DC., New York, Ohio, Minnesota and Massachusetts.
- Mountain Meadow created a Ning site scheduled to launch in Fall 2009. (Ning is an all ages private networking site similar to Facebook.) The site will allow youth, parents and friends to connect with each other and with Mountain Meadow, offering feedback on projects, keeping in touch with events and opportunities and joining the program.
Public Speaking/Training and Education
- A standing-room only crowd attended From PTA to GSA: The Queer Family School Experience at Equality Forum. The panel, moderated by Thompson, consisted of two students, a GSA leader, an LGBTQ inclusion trainer, and the lead researcher from GLSEN’s recent study about the school experiences of youth from LGBTQ families.
- Thompson and two youth spoke to a congregation in Southern Jersey as part of the church’s regular service. The talk was extremely well received. Nearly $600 was collected in donations, and they invited us back to speak again next year.
- Mountain Meadow designed a training program for teachers and school administrators and created three age-based lesson plans for students, all of which were approved by the Philadelphia School District’s Human Sexuality Materials Review Committee. We hope to be conducting these sessions in schools by 2010.
- We Sing Too: A Celebration of LGBTQ Families is the working title of Mountain Meadow’s first non-fiction book. We have an outline and an interested publisher in place, and have begun interviewing the youth and securing funding for the project. Once published, the book can reap much needed outreach and financial support for Mountain Meadow, so that Keeping It Real can keep growing and expanding.