Team 21 - Pride Without Prejudice

While discussing our sub-section with the mentors, it became clear that there is a lack of awareness surrounding the 2SLGBTQI+ community and the issues homeless youth within this community are facing on a daily basis which leads to a growing stigma. Our core innovation concept is to spread awareness within school age students about the issues faced by the queer community on a daily basis and the results of those issues including mental health struggles, and for some homeless youth in the community, substance use issues. The design of the core innovation concept starts during pride month but can and should be continued throughout the rest of the school year but specifically when the government is outwardly pushing their want to help prevent homelessness. From this, the school boards will organize an assembly within each school that is led by an activist group for queer students. They will showcase and spread awareness around the issues and struggles faced within the youth queer community as well as stopping the stigma placed on the queer community.

There will also be a small slideshow sent from the school board to each individual teacher who will need to present it to their class in the morning which will help spread awareness about the amount of homeless youth who are part of the queer community and the issues they are seeing on a daily basis as they try to live their lives. This will not only help the queer communities in each school feel like they have a safe place to talk about their issues and get the resources they need to receive support, but it will also help all homeless youth by reducing the stigma surrounding them. We came up with our idea and designed it this way as it will help stop the stigma from a young age as children and teenagers are still forming their beliefs and opinions while adults have already formed theirs. If students are able to change their opinions and viewpoints on the queer community, they will also be able to help influence their parents’ opinions to help reduce the stigma in general.

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