Trans Youth Support Grants Totaling $225K Announced

Community Shares of Greater Cincinnati is pleased to announce nine grants totaling $225,000 of first-year funding awarded this fall to support the mental health and safety of local trans youths funded through a two-year appropriation from the City of Cincinnati. 

“In a time when trans youth are facing an intense amount of personal and community trauma inflicted by those with power, many municipalities are choosing to do nothing,” said grantee TransOhio Executive Director Dara Adkinson. “Cincinnati has chosen a unique, substantial action to help support young trans people during this moment.”

Grants awarded are:

• $50,000 to Transform Cincy (via fiscal sponsor ISQCCBE) to expand its community center programming for LGBTQIA+ youths to include weekends and after-school hours. 
• $40,000 to Heartland Trans Wellness (via fiscal sponsor Transgender Advocacy Council) to develop, fund, and host trainings on trans sensitivity for doctors, teachers, and other professionals using a panel of trans youth.
• $31,575 to Equality Ohio Education Fund to fund legal clinics for name changes and gender identifier marker updates.
• $23,425 to National Association of Social Workers Foundation (Ohio Chapter) to fund publication of a guide for healthcare providers on the limitations on gender-affirming care available under new federal and state restrictions.
• $22,500 to GLSEN Greater Cincinnati to expand weekly youth groups for trans youths as well as emergency funding.       
• $20,000 for a Cincinnati Trans Youth Virtual Magazine (operated under greater Cincinnati area magazine publisher Queer Kentucky) to create a new online newsmagazine for and by Cincinnati’s trans youth.
• $15,000 to TransOhio Inc. to fund a Trans & Ally Symposium.
• $12,000 to Camp Lilac to increase awareness and accessibility for Cincinnati trans youth to attend the state’s only summer camp dedicated to trans youths.
• $10,500 to TransMasc Cincy (via fiscal sponsor TransOhio Inc.) to sponsor older trans youths (ages 18-24) to participate in intergenerational retreats

“This investment advances the City’s ongoing commitment to equitable access to health and safety resources for all residents,” said Deanna White, Director of Human Services for the City of Cincinnati. “By supporting organizations that provide affirming care and mental health services for transgender youth, we are furthering our goals of building a safer, more inclusive city where every young person has the opportunity to thrive.”

Community Shares convened a panel of medical professionals with expertise in gender affirming care, trans youth with lived experience, and parents of LGBTQIA+ youth who also had experience in grantmaking to review and score the applications received. 

Tristan Vaught, co-founder of Transform Cincy, said: “Transform Cincy is deeply grateful to the City of Cincinnati for investing in trans and nonbinary youth. This support allows us to expand access to affirming spaces and critical resources, ensuring that young people have safe, supportive, and empowering environments after school and on weekends.”

Health Resource Center Celebrates 30 Years

Dr. Connie Wilson’s daughter recalls one morning in 1995 when her mother explained they had to stop on the way to school to pick up a man who believed he was Jesus and stood in the middle of Vine Street each morning to “order the sun to rise.”

That man was a patient at the newly-formed Health Resource Center (HRC) — the clinic Connie founded after seeing the same unhoused and hard-to-serve individuals repeatedly cycle through Psychiatric Emergency Services at University Hospital.

Determined to make a lasting difference, Connie, her husband Dr. Bob Wilson, and social work student Mary Lynne Calkins created a nurse-operated mental health clinic focused on long-term care and case management for those most in need. Learn more about HRC's founding in the video above (also accessible here). 

Last month, Community Shares member Health Resource Center celebrated its 30th anniversary and the opening of its new facility at 130 Wellington Place, in partnership with IKRON Corporation.

Community Council Forum Oct. 21

Community Shares member organizations Woman's City Club and the League of Women Voters Cincinnati in partnership with the Cincinnatus Association will host a panel discussion Oct. 21 on Cincinnati's Community Councils: A Crucial Link or an Obstacle to Development.

The City of Cincinnati website states that, “Community councils are a crucial link between the City and its many unique neighborhoods, and each council is as unique as the neighborhood it serves. These organizations ensure that neighborhood development responds to the needs and goals of its citizens.” But do they?

Are community councils still a “crucial link" in city governance? Does their role need to be clarified? How is community input gathered, represented and valued in decision-making? Is there a better way to do civic engagement? How should Community Councils be supported? These are some of the questions that will be discussed by our well-qualified panel:

Elizabeth Barkley, Executive Director, Invest in Neighborhoods

Jacqueline Edmerson, President, Bond Hill Community Council

Amber Kasseem, President, East Price Hill Improvement Association

Dave Mann, former Mayor and City Council member

Sue Wilke, co-chair, Civic Engagement Action Team

Cheri Rekow, Woman's City Club vice president for civic engagement, will moderate.

The panel is scheduled 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at First Unitarian Church, 536 Linton Street, in Avondale.

Please RSVP at wcc@womanscityclub.org.

Free Environmental Movies Nov. 11

Community Shares fiscal sponsor Project Create will close out its programming with a free environmental movie double feature on Veteran's Day.

The Esquire Theatre will show "Wall-E' at 1 p.m. and "Dark Waters" at 3 p.m. The former is a Disney/Pixar animated classic nominated the Best Picture and which focuses on the last trash compacting robot on a post-apocalypse Earth. The latter is the story of a Cincinnati attorney who took on polluting West Virginis industrialists.

RSVP here for a chance to win a gift card.