|
Hello! My name is Nick. I am 21 years old and was born in a very rural area of North Carolina where I lived before going away for college. I have identified being gay for almost 7 years. For the last 9 months I have been working with LGBTQ youth. My passion for working with queer youth began in January during a study abroad program in Kenya through my university. I spent an entire month working very closely with LGBTQ organizations and, more specifically, those geared toward queer youth. I saw, first hand, the lack of resources available to queer youth to explore their sexuality or to gain information on sexual health. After returning to the U.S., I began examining the resources available to queer youth in the states and concluded that America was also lacking. That’s when I made a commitment to work towards empowering queer youth and helping them gain access to information and services that allows them to be themselves. Being a self-identified gay male living in the South has not exactly been a walk in the park. The small town where I grew up was not very accepting of LGBTQ citizens and I was closeted for quite a while. It was not until I went away to college, in a more liberal setting, that I finally came out. I learned a lot about myself during the coming-out process and became more confident in the person I am today. This led to my involvement with Youth Resource. Although this is my first year being an online peer educator, I have been gay all my life. So I hope that my experience as a gay male living in the South can serve as a resource for those who are going through the coming-out process or those who have already come out. With my newfound commitment to empowering queer youth, I hope to work for a non-profit that works exclusively with queer youth after college. I want to help integrate queer youth into the larger gay and lesbian movement; to help them find a voice, not just in the larger metropolitan areas, but across the country |