Dear TYFA families, friends and allies,

We hope the New Year finds you well and in good spirits.  Here at TYFA, we are busy working with schools, social service agencies and health care providers to ensure that families with gender variant and transgender children are welcome and supported in their communities.  Our goal for every encounter is to educate and empower others so that they may understand how these children benefit from supportive and inclusive environments.

We want to share with you something exciting that is happening.  TYFA is currently experiencing an amazing influx of families requesting our educational and advocacy services.  This indicates two wonderful things, 1) families with gender variant and transgender children are reaching out and standing up for their special kids; 2) TYFA is being recognized as the “go to” organization for the support and guidance that they seek.  We couldn’t be more thrilled!

We continue to be committed to providing services to families without regard to their ability to compensate us for our expenses.  We currently have 17 open case files and most of these are new clients since January 1, 2008.  These numbers have already surpassed the total number of families we provided services for last year!

As with any education and advocacy effort, there are costs involved with bringing TYFA’s programs to these families.  Some examples of program costs are:

Staff In-service for local school
or service provider                           $250-$500
Staff In-service for out-of-state
school or service provider                $800-1200

These 17 families are located in 13 states and only 2 of them are “local” to one of our advocates.  The bottom line is: if all of these families end up needing on-site services, our total projected expenses could be as much as $12,000-$18,000.

Will you help us continue to provide these important services to families without regard to their ability to pay by providing funding for all or a portion of one of these programs?  Your contribution will directly influence the quality of life for one of these deserving children.

On another note,  in October of 2007, we launched the Ian Benson Project and Amethyst Ribbon Campaign, an awareness project to battle suicide among transgender youth.

Ian Benson was a 16 year old affirmed male who took his own life in October of last year.  Ian’s mother, TYFA Secretary/Treasurer, hopes that we can help other children and families avoid the pain and struggles that lead to suicide among transgender youth.  You may read more about this project and order ribbons by clicking on the Amethyst Ribbon.

We are very proud to announce that we have secured sponsorship for the Ian Benson Project.  A private donor from the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund made a donation of $20,000 for the development of programs and services specifically related to our suicide prevention outreach.  You can look forward to more information via email and our website about the development of this essential program.

We are overcome with gratitude for the generosity of our private donor.  We thank them from the bottom of our hearts…the loss of even one child is too many.

On behalf of all the courageous children and the families that love them, we ask you to be as generous as you can with a donation to TransYouth Family Advocates, Inc. (TYFA), so that we may continue our work and keep up with the growing demand for our services.

If each and every person on our mailing list would find it in their heart to donate just $20, we would raise over $18,000.  If each individual coming to our website for the remainder of January would also contribute $20 we could raise an additional $48, 000. Think of the impact your $20 donation could have on the life of one of these children. You can make your tax deductible donation via paypal or credit card by clicking on the “Make a donation’ button.

With the greatest of appreciation,

TransYouth Family Advocates, Inc. Board of Directors:

Kim Pearson, Executive Director
Shannon Garcia, President
Amy G., Secretary/Treasurer
Bruce Parker, II, MS, Director of Curriculum Development
“Just Evelyn” Director
Jamison Green, MFA, Director
Andrea James, MA, Director

TransYouth Family Advocates, Inc. Advisory Committee

Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
Moonhawk River Stone, MS, LMHC,
Reid Vanderburgh, MA, LMFT

P.S.- We don’t want you to give until it hurts; we just want you to give until it feels good.  Any amount is appreciated and will provide support for our education and advocacy efforts on behalf of gender variant children and their families.

TransYouth Family Advocates, Inc. is a 501(C)3 organization, therefore, all donations are tax deductible.  Our Tax ID number is 20-8050977.  Make checks payable to:

TYFA
P.O. Box 1471
Holland, MI.  49422-1471

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 3:49 am and is filed under News and Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.