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mackenzian

Keisha E. McKenzie | communication | systems | social good

development

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Investing in imagination

"No matter how lofty your spiritual ideals may be, no matter how many powerful affirmations of Truth you can speak by rote, you still have to pay your bills." —Eric Butterworth

Whatever our philosophy on money, however much we give or save, and regardless of how we rationalize, we’re still left with some basic practical realities.

No matter how lofty your spiritual ideals may be, no matter how many powerful affirmations you can speak by rote, you still have to pay your bills.” —Eric Butterworth, Spiritual Economics

We still have obligations. We still benefit from others’ talents and resources. They need to be paid. We need to be paid. In a world where currency is the language of trade, we eat, drink, clothe ourselves, and shelter ourselves by getting paid.

These facts don’t change for people in the social sector, people who spend their prime waking hours and some nights too helping, teaching, guiding, or counseling others.

Our beliefs about sharing resources don’t change those facts. Beliefs about tithing or donating to good causes and other people in need don’t change the facts.

Wherever we draw benefits from other people, and we all do, there’s that rule: we still have to pay our bills.

Don’t worry (be happy)

A short teaching on worrying about life’s necessities is tucked into the middle of the Sermon on the Mount:

So I tell you, don’t worry about the food or drink you need to live, or about the clothes you need for your body. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes.” —Matthew 6:25

Food, drink, and clothes are really great things. I love them all! I don’t seek out involuntary hunger, thirst, or nakedness for myself and don’t wish it on others close or distant. That anyone in our world doesn’t have these basics of life is a testimony against us all.

In Matthew, I don’t see Jesus arguing that people should seek out experiences of lack. But I believe he was right to caution us on worry.

Worry shows up in my life as a creativity vampire. When I think of all of the times during grad school when I stalled on my art or struggled to deliver work I knew I was capable of, I can map those periods to straightforward survival insecurity: health concerns, for instance, or having to trade-off groceries and mandatory federal fees.

Beyond those kinds of binds, worry drew my attention away not only from my routine work but also from the vision and energy that I might otherwise have devoted to co-building a world where no one need be hungry, thirsty, naked, isolated, or purposeless.

Many people don’t even believe such a world is possible: we do have 7.125 billion people to care for. But I think this sense of futility undermines our imaginations and, combined with the low hum of worry, discourages us from taking action.

When we believe there is not enough, that resources are scarce, then we accept that some will have what they need and some will not. We rationalize that someone is destined to end up with the short end of the stick.

When we believe that more is better, and equate having more with being more…then people on the short end of that resource stick are assumed to be less smart, less able, even less valuable, as human beings. We feel we have permission to discount them.

When we believe that’s just the way things are, then we assume a posture of helplessness. We believe that a problem is unsolvable. We accept that in our human family neither the resource-rich members nor the resource-poor members have enough money, enough food, or enough intelligence or resourcefulness to generate lasting solutions.” —Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money

Investing in imagination

People of faith and ethical philosophy have a responsibility to set the mental and material stage for people living and choosing every day: we need worlds of experience where people don’t feel so powerless and aren’t so under-resourced that worrying makes sense for them, for us.

We need to live. We need the basics to live well. And we need them as a baseline for building thriving lives of trust, hope, and constructive action.

There are enough resources on Earth to feed, water, and clothe everyone here. We don’t lack because there isn’t enough. People lack because we don’t care for each other enough to distribute what we have effectively.

We can change those realities because we created them. We can change them and replace them with a world of enough. And we can change and challenge the circumstances and doctrines that got us living in futility and learned helplessness; we can change them one conscious gift at a time.

Support people and organizations whose contributions nourish you and build the world you plan to live in.

Divest from people and organizations whose contributions shore up fear or futility, or teach you that what is is all that can be.

Give your time and skills, networks and attention to the work and world you’re drawn to, because only through our imaginations and investment will that world ever bloom.

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The gift of presence

This week, I’m in a class on philosophies of philanthropy and reading Eric Butterworth’s Spiritual Economics and Lynne Twist’s The Soul of Money.

Butterworth’s book was first written the year I was born (some of the content shows that), but Twist’s book combines her reflections from a career in non-profit development, fundraising, and work on tough social issues like resolving global hunger and helping Amazon residents preserve their forest. Not all of Twist’s anecdotes resonate with me, but it’s clear her thoughts are grounded in her life and professional experiences.

Butterworth and Twist agree that we thrive as we practice giving, living generously (“contributing whatever [you] have without fear of loss”), partnering with others, and pouring our energy and affirmative attention into people and projects that we fully believe in.

They also agree on what now feels like a basic life principle: expecting one’s beliefs to be beneficial. They don’t mean that our beliefs should turn us a financial profit, necessarily. They mean that there’s no point building our lives around beliefs that leave us fearful, anxious for the future, or invested in the assumptions that violence, poverty, and hardship are inevitable and that efforts to resolve them are futile.

What if I could be radically present in my life, appreciating the beauty and challenges of existence moment by moment, giving my full attention to the people, work, and opportunities to contribute that come my way, and centering myself in who I am, not merely what I have or can get? What if I judged my choices and contributions, as Butterworth says, “out of the expanse of [my] wholeness, not at its expense”?

Chart: "Getting, having, giving, being | rightward arrow | "Your presence is the greatest gift. As you grow, your core motive changes." —@mackenzian

When I was about to complete my last year of college in Jamaica, I had a series of life-disrupting health events. I withdrew from school with a letter to the registrar—still one of the hardest letters I’ve ever written—and spent nearly 9 months back in the UK recovering. It wasn’t that I’d been living my life in getting mode and suddenly understood what giving meant; that’s not my story. But the experience did teach me a lot about what it means to simply be, even when I’m not in a position to meet cultural expectations and frenetically produce.

My presence is the greatest gift.

In the decade and a half since that experience, I’ve only become more inclined to spaces where people are valued for who they are, not primarily for what they can give, how much they possess, or what they can get for themselves or for others. When we show up in these kinds of spaces, we do bring all of our gifts and skills and perspectives and community resources with us, but we aren’t valuable for the gold in our backpacks. We are the gift.

From that perspective, imagine the power of entire teams of people who know who they are and bring their whole selves into collaborative relationships. Imagine communities filled with people who reach out to other people they respect and whose work they love enough to amplify without drama, score-keeping, or the hope of extra credit. Relationships win the race!

In a you-or-me world, reciprocity and collaboration don’t fit. A you-and-me world is full of collaborators, partners, sharing, and reciprocity… Collaboration becomes the circuitry through which the energy, attention, and resources of sufficiency flow and are continually renewed. Implicit in collaboration is the trust that says there is enough and we will figure out how to use it together wisely.” —Lynne Twist and Teresa Barker

These are counter-cultural priorities, yes. But they yield innovative, financial, and relational results that are far better long-term than living small-hearted, grasping, isolated, and suspicious.

 

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Three ways to preserve the innocence of giving

"Preserve the innocence in giving. When misanthropy dresses up as philanthropy, when hatred or fear motivate funding or aid, fundraisers need to protect their own innocence and help boards and donors to do the same." —@mackenzian

Ever received a hand-made card from a child? The drawing might be bright and the handwriting might be inscrutable, but neither of those things are why we display children’s notes on our fridges or treasure the gifts they make.

There’s an innocence in the act of open-hearted giving and receiving, and that innocence is worth preserving in professional fundraising as well as between adults and children.

Keep three things in mind as you connect people and organizations who have resources with the other people, organizations, and causes that need them.

1. Assume abundance.Over the last several years, a lot of people have suffered financially. Some have lost long-held jobs or been unable to find steady work at all. For so many, the decade has been a season of scarcity, and so talk of abundance seems alien.

But an assumption of abundance is especially important now. Those of us who didn’t come from wealthy backgrounds and still aren’t flush get to practice holding the energy of plenty as we work with resources on behalf of causes we care about. We practice not centering board fears about the bank balance or worrying that good work won’t find advocates.

Be willing to guide program leaders in breaking projects into more fund-able increments, or revising projects in ways that leverage other resources the team already has. In the context of abundance, and assuming that change is about the long game and not the short-term, there’s no reason to be inflexible about the next step!

2. Remember why you’re raising resources, and don’t get distracted. The foundation we use for fundraising campaigns, invitation letters, and appeals has to be able to bear the love for humankind that philanthropy is all about.

It’s possible to raise a lot of money on other grounds—hatred of Others or fear of what they might be doing in the big wide world—and both crowdfunding platforms and traditional fundraising programs do that all the time. But if you love the cause and you want it to run smoothly for a long time, why fuel it that way?

A world that works for all won’t run on misanthropy, so don’t plan on using it to drive your fundraising. Be willing to design resource initiatives around the outcomes and representations of people that you want to see more of, and don’t allow desperation or fear to seep into your resource-raising work.

3. Stay grounded: people trump the numbers. Development can be grueling because it’s essential: resources allow people who care a lot to serve others and make change, and without resources that simply doesn’t happen. Because balance sheets are tangible but our assumptions about and vision for the world usually aren’t, it can be tempting to focus on things we can see and count: how many dollars a campaign yielded; whether a pre-launch deadline was met; how many members served ever give back.

But people have to trump the numbers: a non-profit organization converts in-flowing financial and human resources into out-flowing service, programming, and content for the sake of the community and wider society. It’s not about activity for the sake of activity or income for the sake of income. Whenever that focus and balance is lost, we risk losing the simple heart that keeps staff and donors rightly oriented to each other and to their common mission.

If you’re ever tempted to lose the light spirit of giving, take a cue from Banana Kid. This home video isn’t captioned, but the star teaches us all we need to learn through his body language and openness.

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LGBT Youth Homelessness? Not The Time To Argue

A plate of cookies much like those that won't be made and sold for LGBT youth homelessness in Berrien Springs, MI.
Sell cookies? No, you may not.

I recently learned that an unofficial student group at Andrews University has been blocked from fundraising on campus to support a regional LGBT youth homelessness organization. (Read more via Blue Nation Review, Windy City Times, and Raw Story.)

I’ve heard for years about the differences in how heterosexual and LGBT youth experience homelessness and youth services, but I wanted the facts. So I searched organizations that focus on or have reported research on youth homelessness in the last 10 years, including Urban Peak, the National Coalition for Homelessness, the Center for American Progress, the US State Department, and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

These Are The Facts

The stats: LGBT youth are a disproportionate subset of the homeless population in the US, where Andrews University is based. They represent 20-40% of the homeless youth population: more than 320,000 people every single year (some report much higher numbers based on US government research).

For the majority of these youth, family rejection and forced eviction because of gender or sexuality is one of the most common reasons they end up on the street. Said more simply, these youth end up on the street without a safe place to sleep because their families reject and discard them. (CAP, 2010)

Nearly 60% of LGBT homeless youth report having experienced sexual violence including sexual assaults. Around 30% of heterosexual homeless youth report the same. That’s a ratio difference of 2:1—for every single heterosexual homeless youth who experiences sexual violence, two LGBT homeless youth do. The National Coalition for the Homeless and Urban Peak, Colorado both report that LGBT homeless youth were over seven times more likely to experience sexual violence. Seven times more likely.

The US State Department’s 2014 Trafficking in Persons report notes that LGBT youth “are at particularly high risk of being forced into prostitution,” and that “cumulative effects of homophobia and discrimination make LGBT persons particularly vulnerable to traffickers who prey on the desperation of those who wish to escape social alienation and maltreatment.”

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Family and Youth Services Bureau surveyed grantees in 11 states (MA, FL, TX, AZ, CA, DC, NY, WA, NE, MN, and Chicago, IL where Project Fierce is based), and found that more than 51% of the youth being served had been asked to leave their homes by a parent or caregiver. Thirty percent of these grant-supported youth identified as LGB, 6.8% identified as transgender, and an additional 4% identified as something other than heterosexual. That report is from October 2014.

LGBT homeless youth complete suicide at 3 times the rate of heterosexual homeless youth. For every heterosexual homeless youth who completes suicide, three LGBT homeless youth do (Urban Peak, 2015).

Those are the facts.

All youth merit care.
All youth merit care.
All youth merit care.

Some of these youth are heterosexual. Some are LGBT. Though this shouldn’t matter an iota, it does.

Heterosexual and LGBT youth don’t have parallel experiences in their homes, in the foster care system, or with public or private services. These two groups have a different quality of experience and merit a different quality of support.

What Andrews Can Do Now

An Andrews University administrator has told AULL4One: “If a way can be found to serve LGBT homeless youth through an organization that more fully reflects the University’s mission and the stance of our denomination (which clearly calls for exhibiting compassion toward LGBT persons), let’s explore that.”

Yes, let’s.

When we look at the stats, the need becomes clear. I don’t know how AULL4One intends to move forward, but here’s my suggestion to Andrews University as an alumna of one of its sister schools: leave AULL4One to its work and start your own.

Andrews University has the opportunity to respond to the objective need here, to help “all” youth, including LGBT youth. If it genuinely wishes to do this, and it has said it does, there is nothing in the world stopping it.

Let’s see the university match whatever amount AULL4One raises independently, and send the matched contribution to whichever other organization it approves. Unless that other organization discriminates, LGBT youth will still be disproportionately served, because LGBT youth are disproportionately homeless.

Just as Paul, Silas, John Mark, and Barnabas did twice the work apart that Paul and Barnabas did together, perhaps Andrews University’s refusal to assist AULL4One so far can produce twice the impact the original proposal would have.

While the university decides how to contribute, I fully support AULL4One in acknowledging the subset of youth that’s disproportionately harmed by the status quo.

We’re accountable for seeing God’s image in every human being, regardless of creed. All youth merit care. Some youth are homeless, and some homeless youth are also LGBT and have disproportionately poor outcomes. Even if the facts could be argued, this is not the time to argue back. It is time to confront reality and act.

A Gap between Values and Practices

‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’
‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’—Matthew 25

As Adventists, we say we believe children and youth have “the right to a loving and stable home where there is safety and freedom from abuse” and “the right to adequate food, clothing, and shelter” (Well-being and Value of Children, 2000). We say we consider “the nurture and protection of children a sacred trust” (Nurture and Protection of Children, 2010).

In 2010, the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference Executive Committee also declared that “actions to reduce poverty and its attendant injustices are an important part of Christian social responsibility”:

“Seventh-day Adventists join the global community in supporting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals for reducing poverty by at least 50 percent by 2015. In furtherance of this, Seventh-day Adventists partner with civil society, governments and others, working together locally and globally to participate in God’s work of establishing enduring justice in a broken world.

“As followers of Christ we engage this task with determined hope, energized by God’s visionary promise of a new heaven and a new earth where there is no poverty or injustice. Seventh-day Adventists are called to live imaginatively and faithfully inside that vision of God’s Kingdom by acting to end poverty now.” —Global Poverty, June 2010

And so here we are. It’s 2015 today. The UN’s goal is unmet, but the cause is not lost. A group of Adventist students has stepped up to serve youth more vulnerable than they are: these students are partnering with others to meet a very practical challenge in their sphere of influence.

How will you help?

AULL4One leaders have just announced a stretch goal of $5,000 to support a regional youth homelessness service organization. Help them blow past this goal and impact the youth in their community!

 

Update: This evening, Andrews University administrators e-mailed a statement on this fundraiser to campus faculty members, staff, and students. This statement acknowledges some of the facts outlined above and notes that we don’t have to agree to protect or care for one another. Yet the statement neither supports the ongoing fundraiser nor announces a complementary one that meets its requirements of “primary alignment [with] the University’s mission and its faith commitment.”

And so the AULL4One fundraiser remains the only active campaign addressing youth homelessness that involves Andrews University students. It runs until April 7 and is a great opportunity to practice the value of compassion.

 

 

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A Few Words on World Vision USA

“The quest for doctrinal purity & the exclusion it necessarily brings about is the very definition of missing the point.” —Carla Jo, 3/27/2014

Visually complex representation of internet relay chat connections. A series of circles on a horizontal line are linked by arcs; each arc shows who sent messages to whom; heavier lines represent more frequent communication.
Martin Dittus (c) 2006 via Visual Complexity

There’s been a lot of e-ink given over to World Vision USA this week. I’ve had no personal dealings with this organization, though I’ve known of the work other World Vision branches have done around the globe. Like the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), World Vision has branches in each territory that adapt with their respective legal and social climates.

The purpose of this adaptation: that World Vision can advance its faith-mission in the most effective way for the benefit of those who need help no matter where in the world they happen to be.

I don’t know any international faith-based NGOs that don’t do this: it’s a necessary and non-negotiable part of working with others. Failing to adapt with one’s context is a recipe for extinction. You can be sealed off and buried as pure and unmoved as you like; without adaptation you’ll still be dead. 

I agree with those who foresee World Vision USA changing its hiring practices in a decade or two, perhaps sooner, with none of the angst it’s experiencing now, and as part of the tail-end of the US’ evolution rather than part of its leadership.

So for me, the only question to be asked about World Vision’s sustainability in this country is not whether it will adapt to culture, but how it will adapt to culture. World Vision Canada has long adapted and its mission hasn’t been damaged: something else other than efficacy is in play here. The status quo—a kind of Christian intra-group cannibalism—is phenomenally expensive in both fiscal and human terms.

According to World Vision’s board chairman Richard Stearns, the organization lost around 5,000 sponsors this week—the fiscal equivalent of “up to $2.1 million a year.” People from all perspectives have been crying “But what about the children!” and telling their peers how terrible it would be to use child sponsorship as a way to reward or punish the non-profit for its hiring policy.

It seems that most people genuinely are concerned for the well-being of children now served by World Vision or suddenly unsponsored by donors. But I have a broader concern about the wider Church. It’s not simply that children are pawns in the Church’s skirmishes. It’s that as a collective we’ve accepted that anyone of any age can be collateral in this dogmatic battle or that Last Doctrinal Stand.

The sun rises in the background as a US soldier in fatigues walks across a dusty desert foreground. His rifle is pointed downward.
Karbala, Iraq, March 17, 2003 (c) John Moore, AP

As I said to a group at Loma Linda University last month, we’ve fallen into such love with military faith metaphors that the logic of “acceptable losses” is virtually native. The children and adults who bear the burden of these losses are asked why they don’t just leave the group to its exclusive norms. And should they leave, they’re asked why they lacked the grace to forgive any harms done. Given an acceptance that collateral damage is either unavoidable or a sign that we’re doing something right (!), it’s so easy for us to lay the burden of moral response on individuals than to question or change the institutional, social, and policy context that begs for a response in the first place.

So children have been harmed here. I’ve also read comments from LGBT World Vision workers. A major difference between the unsponsored children and the LGBT staff members who support World Vision is that LGBT staff members have returned to work for an organization whose administrators have just spent the last 24 hours telling the world that they’re morally deficient, have abandoned essential Church tenets, and are essentially unfit to cooperate with the Church in anti-poverty relief work. Some of us reach toward a future where children like those served by World Vision will never have to experience the kind of false comfort that serving adults have experienced this week.

In his Q&A with Religion News Service’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Stearns says his board had aimed “to create some space of togetherness around differences within the church.” My sense is it’s a colossal error to imagine that that space of togetherness is something everyone in the Church wants.

I see us collectively reading the prayer “That all of them may be one as we are”—and responding to it not with a “Amen” but with a wrinkled forehead and a long list of exceptions. The first time I had this thought it shocked me, but when the shock wore off, I understood some of our recurring policy disagreements a whole lot more. Not all of us want to be one. Some of us would prefer to be the Few, the Pure.

Perhaps until recently I’ve been subtle about the fact that the vision that I walk and work towards includes people who have already called me the mouthpiece of Satan. And this vision doesn’t require them to change their opinion about how wrong I am. These people are part of my ideal future because I believe they have beautiful things to add to our common table whether we concur or not, and they already add some of those things now. I believe this even as I know their vision for us doesn’t include me as me, and might, in its most generous form, only include an Outer Limits-style analog of who I am.

No surprise: the option that motivates my time, energy, commitment, resources, skills, and vocal support is the one that accommodates each of us, that imagines space for us to offer our best to collective advantage, and that doesn’t run on a logic of dominance and exclusion. “With each new interpretation [of Scripture],” Josiah Daniels writes, “Christians have an opportunity to extend an olive branch instead of a sword.”

That branch is what I offer those who demonize me. I think, in the end, we’ll all benefit from that.

If you’d like to read more around the World Vision situation this weekend, you have a million articles to choose from! Try these:

Photo of Desmond Tutu seated with hands folded in front of him. He seems to be in prayer.***

Re. one who has lived a different Way: OnBeing’s Krista Tippett recently released her conversation with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. Listen here.

There’s no question about the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering, but at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love.

Tutu’s giggle is the best.
I’m grateful for his life witness.
May this kind increase.

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Coding for the Community: A Conversation with Teagan Widmer

Refuge Restrooms is already web- and mobile-ready. Development continues. Image via T. Widmer
REFUGE restrooms is already web- and mobile-ready. Development continues. Image via T. Widmer

I met Teagan about three years ago. She had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a compelling thesis on the representation of transgender women in film. After moving back to the Left Coast, she started learning computer programming languages on her own and in Bay Area coding collectives.

Teagan recently hit the news with several articles on REFUGE restrooms, a new open source app that allows users to find safe, accessible, single-stall, and gender-neutral public restrooms. The Advocate, Huffington Post, Autostraddle each picked up the story, and we managed to speak amidst the buzz despite internet woes, a broken cell phone, and other technological conspiracies.

I’m proud to help Teagan and the REFUGE restroom app team share a word about their work.

KM: With everything that’s going on, how are you?

TW: Overwhelmed! But that’s been this week. Other than my phone breaking today, I’m doing great.

I can imagine. Did all the attention just rush at you this week or has it been climbing over the last few months?

Just this week. Posting it on my Facebook originally started it.

You must have either a lot of friends or a lot of well-connected friends. That’s great for the app and for the community grapevine!

I just posted the working basic version after the hackathon. After I posted it on Twitter and Facebook, it started to spread virally, and a friend who works for the Advocate messaged me to set up an interview.

And you’ve been coding the app quietly on github?

Yes, since November. I’ve been coding it on my lunch breaks and free time. I started learning how to code in September. This is my first application.

That’s incredible progress. Why is it important to you to do this project in this way?

I used the old safe2pee database back early in my transition to help me find bathrooms. It was an incredibly valuable resource.

But safe2pee has been defunct for a while now.

Right. I realized this a few months back, and saw the need.

What about people who don’t have access to smartphones? Will they also be able to access REFUGE restrooms in some way or is it going to stay a web/mobile database for now?

It’ll be a mobile/web database at the moment, but with funding and time I hope to build a system where you can text your address to a number and get the nearest 3 restrooms.

That would be awesome! A text-access option would make your team’s work available to even more community members. How many people are coding with you at the moment?

About 9 people have helped in some way, mostly small ways. But there was a group of 3 of us that really pushed it out. My friend Alicia, in Daley City, did most of the JS [JavaScript] mapping. And a girl named Pam helped me at the One Web For All hackathon with the CSS on the site [Cascading Style Sheets determine a webpage’s appearance].

You’ve spoken a lot about the safe2pee database and using that to populate REFUGE restrooms. Were there any gaps in that data? What kind of data do you still need?

More data is always good. But the majority of the safe2pee data is focused in metropolitan centers so more rural areas would be an incredible help for folks. There are some international listings, but that’s a place for growth too. As of right now we have about 5,100 listings.

If people want to contribute data points re. safe and/or accessible bathrooms around the US, how should they do that?

They can add new bathrooms directly on the REFUGE restrooms site; there is a link on the home page.

Screenshot of the Refuge Restroom homepage. Users can add new data to Refuge Restrooms by clicking "Submit a restroom" in the top left corner of the homepage.
Users can add new data to REFUGE restrooms by clicking “Submit a restroom” on the home page.

Why did you and the team choose to make the app a copyleft, open source project?

For one, I think the app should be a completely free thing. I don’t really want to make money from it. If I’m able to get a job because of this work, that will be awesome. I’m finding that I might have to do some fundraising because the work on the site could be full-time work at this point. I want to finish developing it and do it right.

Also, if a project is open source, that does two things. It allows people to read my code, and that can act as a portfolio for me in some ways. It also allows other people to help. I’ve been working on the project largely by myself. I’ve convinced a few friends to help, but there is so much more work to be done, and other people are going to have some great ideas about how to contribute and make it the best possible resource. Open source allows for that.

Open source also allows people to take the code and build from it and create their own sites. I’ve already talked to somebody who wants to make a similar site to index restaurants for people with food allergies and provide information about possible allergens.

That’s potentially life saving. How important is it to you that this resource be a community project, something that trans + gender non-conforming communities, wider LGBTQ communities, and tech communities can all participate in?

I think the topic lends itself to community building. The goal is to provide as many safe places for people as possible. That’s a community goal. As much as this is my project, it’s also a resource the community needs: it’s a community project. The majority of the help so far has been from LGBTQ tech people or tech allies. I finished the bulk of the work this past weekend at the One Web For All hackathon.

Support from the programming / tech world would be huge: they bring an expertise that I don’t have. I’m a beginner at this, I’m still learning, and I want to learn from whoever is willing to teach me. Ideally I’d love to get into a programming intensive course and spend three months working on just code, preparing myself to have a job in the industry.

What do you think it’s important for readers to understand about REFUGE restrooms? You’ve created something of value with skill here.

I think it’s important for them to understand the context of safe bathroom access and violence against trans people—why we need this. At the same time, we’re too often framed as a tragedy in the media, and that needs to change.

Absolutely. So if someone now reads about you and wants to take supportive action, what are 3 things you’d like them to do?

1. Visit the REFUGE restroom website, and add to the database.

2. Spread the word. The more word is spread, the more people who need it can use the resource.

3. Donate to my Gittip page to help me move to part-time hours at work and do more development on the app.

Excellent. Congratulations, Teagan, and thanks for talking with me today!

Support Teagan and REFUGE restrooms by checking out REFUGE restrooms and dropping the team some fiscal encouragement through Teagan’s gittip page. Also like the REFUGE community on Facebook, and get regular updates on the app’s progress on Tumblr.