Although we have suspended all in-person PFLAG NYC meetings while we practice social distancing during the fight against COVID-19, PFLAG NYC is still here for all members of our community. We are happy to announce that all of our support meetings are moving online and will continue to take place on the regular schedule.

Online meetings will give our community members a great way to maintain community and keep up connections with others during this unusual time. We hope you’ll join us as we work together to combat feelings of stress and isolation.

Starting Monday, March 23, when our Upper West Side meeting would have taken place, we will launch regular online meetings for support and discussion using Zoom, a web-based video conferencing app that people everywhere are becoming very familiar with.

For the remainder of March, we’ll hold two online meetings:

• Monday, March 23 - 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.: General support meeting at the time of our usual Upper West Side meeting
• Tuesday, March 31 - 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.: TransFamilies Project at the time of the usual TFP in Greenwich Village.

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Volunteer with the Safe Schools Program

Come to New Speaker Orientation on February 1

Rapt students listen to Anthony Kratunis at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School

The Safe Schools Program brings community speakers into classrooms throughout New York City to share their personal experience of LGBTQ loved ones in their lives, or being an LGBTQ person themselves.

Community speakers make the Safe Schools Program powerful, because it is unlike any other experience students have in their classroom. Ordinary people from the community — parents, other relatives, and LGBT people themselves — share their own stories of having an LGBTQ loved one, or of being LGBT themselves. These personal stories make the Safe Schools Program uniquely powerful in reaching students. As one educator told us, “The event was absolutely fabulous! Students commented that you never hear parents’ reactions and family stories. It was a new perspective for them. It was a really great program and led to great conversations!”

Last school year, we reached more than 9,000 students. In order to reach every school, we always need more volunteers to be speakers in the program and go into schools to share their story. Whether you are a parent of an lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) person, someone with an LGBT loved one in your life, or an LGBT person yourself, your story can help others learn what it means to be LGBT and help change the climate in schools for young people growing up LGBT. You may not think your story is remarkable, but even the most ordinary stories told honestly and proudly can spark revelations and change behavior. Read more »

Last month PFLAG NYC’s Safe Schools Program received this note from a student at a school where we’d just made educational presentations to the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. It’s a thank-you note from one of the student to one of our community speakers. Here it is:

It’s really isolating… Am I a freak?… This short note captures just why even as there is unprecedented acceptance and equality broadly, PFLAG NYC is working harder than ever to expand the spaces where young people can feel safe and affirmed no matter what their identity. LGBTQ people of all ages can still feel alone and under threat — in families and schools in our local communities just as much as on the national stage. Read more »