WELCOME TO OUR VISION.
We envision and deserve a world where Queer and Trans Black Indigenous People Of Color (QTIPOC) can thrive. We envision and deserve a world where we are surrounded by love, by safety, by community, and by our flowers.“Give us our flowers while we are living” is an expression centering the importance to fully love and support Black Trans folk always, not just during times of tragedy, not just in death. Often heard at the Black Trans led Stonewall Protests that continue to this day, it’s a reminder that the push for LGBTQ2IA+ liberation must continue.
Source: https://buck.co/work/pride-zine
History
In 2021, a project was undertaken at the Orange County Rape Crisis Center, known as the Trans Access Capacity-Building Project. A team of consultants with lived queer and trans experience were contracted to conduct an agency-wide needs assessment for OCRCC, the results of which would drive a customized training and technical assistance plan to build the capacity of OCRCC staff to serve trans survivors in their services, and improve internal working conditions for trans staff.
The recommendations that came out of this year-long consulting engagement were as simple as they were powerful:
Healing for trans survivors, particularly QTIPOC survivors, happens in community. OCRCC lives out their vision to build a rape crisis center without walls. Merging these two truths together, we knew things needed to change. While building capacity of the agency’s advocates to serve QTIPOC survivors will always be important, we need to direct resources to the QTIPOC community members who are supporting survivors in community everyday. It is more likely that a QTIPOC survivor will disclose and seek support from a queer or trans community member than a traditional rape crisis center.
Maybe this support is sought in a drag family member, a QTIPOC organizer, a bartender at a local queer bar, a chosen queer family member – anyone. These community members are out here DOING advocacy, DOING organizing, and DOING crisis response. It’s time for us to lean into and value these community actions, and time for us to offer any resources that bolster their capacity to do this work. Resources could mean a variety of things – training, compensation, certification that legitimizes expertise to a future employer, community awareness event materials, or another resource not yet identified.
Crisis services for QTIPOC survivors need to be delivered by community, in community, for community. They need to be designed by QTIPOC survivors, and the advocacy model and certification process needs to be one that empowers, uplifts, and grows the community-based survivor support that QTIPOC community members do every single day already.
To this end, we created the QTIPOC Survivor Advocates Institute.
Present
The 2 Senior Training and Technical Assistance Consultants from the Trans Access Capacity-Building Project, Alexandria and Majic, were contracted to build the QTIPOC Survivor Advocates Institute. A series of focus groups with QTIPOC survivors were conducted to build a nuanced, focused curriculum based on the current realities of QTIPOC folks across the United States. Some of the key findings of survivor needs that emerged from these focus groups included:
- Independent housing in a place that the person feels safe and can safely access food
- Medical Care – Primary and Specialty
- Mental Health with QTIPOC celebratory providers
- Resources for QTIPOC survivors to build community and heal togetherl
- Funding for resources to do art, because art is used as an organizing and healing tool for so many QTIPOC survivors
- Financial stability in jobs with trans inclusive policies and practices
- Substance free spaces AND safe substance use resource centers with QTIPOC celebratory providers
You will see these themes emerge in the institute’s content, and in other places on this website. The themes from these focus groups led to the educational framework upon which the Institute was created.