By Joey Baez
The purpose of this article is to raise awareness for the transgender community and to observe Transgender Day of Remembrance as part of our full-time team’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion within and beyond our community.
During the past 8 months, the Camp IHC Full Time team have felt, acknowledged and supported the fight in the Black Lives Matter movement. We have begun working to better understand the struggle and advocate for their freedom in the fight against oppression in today’s world. As we educate ourselves and work to truly understand, I look forward to sharing our journey with our community in the coming months.
Today, I want to share some additional work we have committed to that was born through our work with BLM. Black Lives Matter has opened our eyes to the many other groups of people who are also feeling the struggles of oppression. This new knowledge has led us to assemble a task force that has made the commitment to ensure diversity and inclusion in our community and have chosen to actively address issues relating to Racism, Mental & Physical Health, Cultural backgrounds, LGBTQ+ issues, Bullying and so much more.
Our goals are to:
- Educate ourselves as a Full-time team,
- Be ambassadors towards these issues in our community,
- Create meaningful ways to expand education and awareness to our community.
Which brings us to today. Did you know that this week is Transgender Awareness Week? Did you also know that today is Transgender Day of Remembrance?
Transgender Awareness Week is celebrated during November (usually during the 2nd full week, though many celebrate during the entire month). The purpose of this week is to educate and celebrate the lives of transgender people around the world. What does it mean when a person tells you they identify as a transgender individual? They are sharing that their gender identity differs from the one that was assigned to them when they were born. This is a very personal part of who they are and oftentimes it takes tremendous courage to share this with others. We should not be afraid when they do. We need to support and celebrate with them. Yet due to lack of understanding and knowledge, those in the transgender community often feel that their choices are treated with negativity by society.
The Trevor Project, “a leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25” offered a way to understand more about the transgender community. The Trevor Project offers resources for Youth professionals and families to be able to have very important conversations about the LGBTQ+ community. One of these resources is the release of their 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. This survey asked over 40,000 LGBTQ youth ages 13–24 across the United States to share their experiences from the last year. The statistics illustrate why it is so important to advocate and protect our transgender youth. This act to protect grows even stronger when you consider the likelihood that one of these very youths surveyed could very well be a part of our community as a camper or staff member.
Unfortunately, many in the transgender community do not have the chance to feel that protection or inclusion. Some do face hate, isolation, physical harm and, even, death. That is why we are observing Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Transgender Day of Remembrance was established after the death of Rita Hester, a transgender African American woman in Massachusetts in 1998. Today, November 20th, we take a moment to remember those that have died from violent hate crimes and self-harm due to their gender identity, as well as Covid-19. This year, we honor 47 lives from the United States, and over 380 people worldwide. For a list of their names, ages and cities of those in the United States, you can visit PFlag.org.
Our full time team at camp IHC is striving to recognize the struggles within the transgender community. Last week, we started by inviting a LGBTQ advocate and speaker, Kai, who is a transgender male. Kai spoke to us of his own personal journey and answered our questions so we can better understand his, and many others, experience. It was an amazing conversation and a great start to arming ourselves in our mission for equality and unity for all. You may also have noticed that in the past month we have added our individual choice of gender pronouns to our signatures to help show that Camp IHC is firm on our commitment to becoming the most inclusive community, no matter what your gender identity or gender expression may be.
We are also providing a donation to The Trevor Project to help them continue their amazing work in providing a place for young people to go for help and support.
Today, on our social media platforms, we are sharing four very simple ways to help show your support for the transgender community in your day-to-day lives:
- Be Inclusive.
- Respect gender pronouns.
- Amplify their voices.
- Educate myself.
Camp IHC is committed to bringing more love, unity and understanding to our world — one step at a time. We will document and share our journey with you and encourage you to do the same. Reach out to us with questions and/or stories of what you are doing to educate and advocate for those around you. We all have the power to do good.
As we say around the campfire every Friday night during the summer: “How many are we? ONE!! One what? ONE Camp. ONE Community. ONE Family.”
