Important Changes Happening at District 202 this Summer!
The Board of Directors takes steps to help District 202 transition into a youth inspired, tech savvy, streamlined and more powerful organization
Dear Community Supporters -
For more than 17 years, District 202 has pioneered providing safe space for GLBT youth and offering programming that builds self-esteem and self expression. Over those years, our youth empowerment model has positively affected many lives, and created many leaders who are District 202 alumni within our community.
Since then, the broader community has changed; safe space now exists in many places, and GLBT youth are more actively engaged. They are visible in their school’s Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), they bring their same-sex dates to high-school proms, they have found community on the Internet, and many of them are expressing their sexual identities in their pre-teens.
The leadership of District 202 has noticed that youth utilization of the center has slid over the years. This is in part due to the growing acceptance of queer youth into the larger society, the forming of new GLBT youth organizations like Host Home Program and RECLAIM, and other positive changes within our community. While need for supportive services definitely still exists, we realized that the agency required significant changes to best use the funds that you’ve entrusted to us and to better serve GLBT youth and the greater community.
These significant changes will not happen overnight. Caterpillars do not instantly sprout wings to become butterflies – nor can we. As part of our transition plan, the board of directors has unanimously agreed to take the following actions:
1. We will leave our home of more than a decade on or before June 30. We’ve historically seen our center visits drop significantly during the summer months. National average costs for youth centers are roughly $9-12 per visit. On busy days, our costs were twice that average. On slower days, our per-visit costs could be ten-times that average. Leaving this building will free up significant funds for necessary programming.
2. We will cease day-to-day operations on or before June 30. It’s impossible to successfully transition if our staff, volunteers and board members are distracted by fulfilling the requirements of operating the center. Therefore, we will enter a cocooning phase on July 1, during which time our staff and board will focus on surveying youth, creating programming to meet current needs, and many other key tasks. We expect this phase to last 90 to 120 days—during which our website will still allow youth to locate resources, network with each other, and engage with us on a very limited basis. And we are actively working to find new positions for our youth staff that will be displaced during this time.
3. We will seek new leadership for the organization. The demands of the next 120 days will be intense, but we are blessed with a dedicated and talented staff. The board of directors decided that the leadership required to transform District 202 could not be met with our recent executive director, who left earlier this week. The new leadership structure and requirements will be determined during the cocooning phase.
Significant organizational changes are never easy or clean cut. The board of directors, staff and many of our active youth are confident that these steps will help foster District 202’s transformation. With this transformation, we wish to reemerge as a youth inspired, tech savvy, streamlined and more powerful organization which keeps creating new ways for youth to bring their unique voice and leadership to our ever-changing world.
We appreciate your ongoing support of our organization during the last 17 years. We will continue update you on our progress in the weeks to come.
Should you have any requests, questions, or comments, please feel free to contact me at the email address below.
Thank you,
Curt Prins
Acting Board Chair
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