JASON E. KAPLAN What does service delivery look like now that schools are open? Our core program is called Girls Groups. These are safe spaces where girls and youth come together with one of our staffers around a curriculum module. It could be social-emotional learning, it could be how to interrupt an oppressive moment, how to advocate for yourself to a teacher. Those happen in our after-school settings, or they may happen in community centers, like Boys and Girls Clubs. We still continue to have those traditional relationships with school buildings and community centers. We also have a virtual program that’s called Girls thINC Outside the Box, and four times a year, a subscription box is sent to your home with 15 hours of independent programming. That is to really support youth who are not in our primary service locations. We don’t have relationships in the Medford-Grants Pass area. We are not in Spokane, we are not in Prineville. But we are seeing that that is where our youth are getting their boxes. Then quarterly, we host a big, big Zoom party where they work on the boxes together. And it’s so much fun. I think one quarter alone, we sent out 700 boxes. Then we also have Leadership Council. That is our preteens and teens, who are our budding advocates from all over Oregon and Washington, and they meet virtually quarterly as well. That’s advocacy training, media literacy, writing letters to the editor. You mentioned earlier that you are an organization that serves LGBTQ youth. Right now schools and youth organizations that talk about queer issues at all are really kind of in the crosshairs and, in some places, facing state censorship. Have you seen any pushback on that in this region? We are a pro-choice organization at the national level; we are a gender-affirming organization. It has posed some complications, because not all Girls Inc.’s are operating in the same environment. One of our affiliates in Texas just lost two-thirds of their funding because they’ve been teaching reproductive health. In Oregon and Washington, we have some protections against that, but we also know that that can change in the blink of an eye. What we’ve decided to do is to be gender-affirming no matter what. At each of our Girls’ Groups, because we have gender nonconforming youth and gender-fluid youth who find our programs very empowering, we do gender pronouns; we don’t assume gender identity. We’ve had some times where some schools have heard that that’s what we’ve done, and we’ve been told we’re not allowed to do that. That’s actually not the case, but the fact that that’s been said to us by some school officials, and we’ve had to get that verified at the top — it means a couple of things. One, we have to just make sure that we stay very determined; there are youth that really do need us. This is also about being strong and well operated, so that if I do have to have a conversation with the school district, that I’m not feeling like we need to cower down. We have our own policies and procedures and we know the law, and I feel very comfortable speaking up about it. 15
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