Wellington’s School’s Out is just one of the many awesome volunteer-packed organisations surviving on a shoestring in order to make life easier for our queer young people. We catch up with youth support worker and education coordinator Connor Amos on how it’s going. What’s happening at School’s Out that makes you the most proud at the moment? This year School's Out has been running for 15 years and are going stronger than ever. We have an awesome team of volunteers who dedicate huge amounts of their time and energy, and youth participation levels, particularly in our Hutt group, are constantly growing. We've been doing a lot of education in schools recently, which is derived from Rainbow Youth's education package. We are also working quite closely with the health promotion team at Family Planning New Zealand to ensure quality sexuality and gender diversity education is delivered to schools who don't often have that opportunity. We also ran a three-day queer youth hui called 'PatchwerQ' with QSA Network Aotearoa in Wellington. It was really rewarding for the youth and offered a lot of leadership opportunities. Its great seeing our youth step up and become volunteers, as part of our work is encouraging youth to want to give back to the community and help others like we have helped them. What challenges are you facing? Our biggest challenge at this time is a serious lack of funding and resources. At the moment we have no paid positions, which means all of our volunteers have to step up and give more of their spare time, which many of us obviously don't have a lot of. As a result of that time constraint, we are often really caught up in dealing with frontline issues, such as youth suicidality, depression and homelessness, that we don't have a lot of time to really work on the big picture organisational stuff. We do have an extremely large number of youth using our services at this time, and while most just want to meet people, many are in need of a lot of support and School's Out is the only safe space they have. It is really great to have youth coming along to our meetings, the amount who do clearly shows that there is a huge gap in supporting queer teenagers. Have you moved or are you moving into your own space? We have been offered an awesome opportunity to move into the Evolve Wellington Youth Service premises and are currently still trying to source funding. We've had some help from community groups such as Rainbow Wellington but we are always looking for more financial support. We can't wait to have our own space, with a place for youth to drop in the means to create a supportive, stable and secure workplace for our volunteers. Is there anything the community can help with? The queer community is already so supportive of us, whether it be individuals like the incredible Jac Lynch (who is forever organising fundraisers, like Fabulunch, for us), or our peer organisations like Evolve Youth Service, NZ Aids Foundation, Family Planning New Zealand and Youthline (to name but a few) who constantly offer so much support for our youth and volunteers. We wouldn't be able to do the work we do without these networks. Having said that, we are always looking to build new relationships with other community members and groups, so if there is anyone out there who wants to offer support of any kind, or if anyone in the area is keen to give back and volunteer with us, they should definitely get in touch. What’s the message to local youth who may be nervous about coming along for the first time? That it's totally normal to be nervous! Everyone has to come along for the first time, if not, no one would come! We aim to make our groups a really welcoming, no-pressure and non-judgemental space, but if people are really nervous or shy they are more than welcome to bring a friend along for support. Alternatively, they can meet up with one of the youth or facilitators beforehand so they will know someone there. Follow School’s Out on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/schoolsoutwellington Connor Amos, with GayNZ.com - 20th September 2013
Credit: Connor Amos, with GayNZ.com
First published: Friday, 20th September 2013 - 1:16pm