Thanks to funding from The Clowes Fund, OUT Maine has been working hard to create a better future for LGBTQ+ youth through programming that focuses on post-secondary education and workforce engagement.
LGBTQ+ youth are regularly bullied in schools, often skipping school or failing to graduate.
Enhancing Maine’s LGBTQ+ Youth Futures Through Post-Secondary and Workforce Engagement is a two-year plan that counters the lack of support for LGBTQ+ youths’ future by providing training to strengthen agencies that support youth seeking higher education and incorporating post-secondary education and career development into OUT Maine’s programs.
To accomplish this, OUT Maine’s Mental Health Coordinator, Maura Oakes LCPC, has been meeting with community partners and educators throughout the state to create a map of resources. Oakes, the OUT Maine team, and community partners will work together to identify the gaps in career and post-secondary success for LGBTQ+ youth. OUT Maine will develop training to help educators and workforce development organizations better set youth up for success as well as identify the barriers to and missing supports for LGBTQ+ youth seeking careers and higher education.
The Clowes Fund is a family foundation established in 1952, in Indianapolis, Indiana, that makes grants in Indianapolis, Massachusetts and northern New England to support human services, education and the arts.
OUT Maine has an ambitious goal: to create more welcoming and affirming communities for Maine’s diverse queer youth in all their intersectional identities by changing the very systems that serve them. For more information, please visit www.outmaine.org.
OUT Maine’s Mental Health Coordinator Maura Oakes, LCPC