Counseling for Queer and Trans Community

Looking for ways to turn your caring into Care? This is your opportunity. It is not often that donating whatever you can, even a small amount, can save someone's life. Not in the future, not theoretically somewhere, but now, here, in Portland. This is a concrete action you can take today locally, to provide life-changing, possibly life-saving Care to people when they need it most.

There is an urgent need for safe(r) mental health spaces for queer, trans, and gender nonconforming folks in Portland—help provide more access now! Your contribution of any amount will make a huge difference: Every $15 you donate will subsidize the cost of an hour of counseling for a population that has a 41% suicide attempt rate, compared to a 4.6% rate in the overall U.S. population.

In order to get this program going , we must raise $1320 (half of the cost of the bare bones pilot program) by June 16. Once we meet that goal, we'll focus on raising the other half—and beyond!

Give as much as you can. Share this campaign with your friends and family. Tell them why providing real mental health support to disadvantaged LGBTQI2S people matters to you and to people you care about. Help us create a program providing low cost or no cost culturally competent community Care to those who need it most and are served least.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Sacred Vessel Natural Medicine (soon to be Equi Institute, 501c3 pending) is working to establish a first year Mental Health Counseling Internship Program in our clinic within the Portland Q Center, providing super low sliding scale down to $0/hr Mental Health support for LGBTQI2S community members, many of whom do not have access to immediate, affordable, culturally specific care. Though counseling is currently available in the clinic one day per week, the counselor is unable to bill insurance at this time, making services less accessible for our low-income patients.

This new program is spearheaded by Jessica Joy, a Saybrook University MA Psychology/Counseling Graduate Student. She will provide client-centered, trauma-aware counseling for individuals, couples and other relationship constellations, families, and groups for a year, beginning in June 2017. In addition to her education as a counselor, Jessica's background in facilitating theatre workshops and personal storytelling salons with diverse community groups will inform her practice. Funds raised will help Jessica pay for her counseling space and licensed supervision.

WORDS FROM JESSICA JOY:

"My community, and the community I intend to serve as a therapist, is low income, queer, creative, highly sensitive, trauma surviving, and intersectionally (race/ gender/ nationality/ sexuality/ class/ ability/ neuro/) diverse. It is my honor to hold healing space for our community.

Equi Institute has taken me up on my offer to initiate this program as their first counseling intern. In addition to providing therapeutic sessions, I’ll be working to create a structure to provide sustainable mental health counseling services (weekly, groups, and crisis) for years to come—but to make this happen we need your help to kick off our pilot year!"

Thank you for your Care and generosity—it’s an honor to provide this service, which your donations will make possible!

To learn more about The Equi Institute, check out their website http://www.equi-institute.org/index/