F I E R C E

FIERCE is committed to exercising our power through strategic campaigns that win real victories for our communities. We ground our work within a long-term vision of changing the structures and root causes that give rise to the challenging conditions our communities face.

In order to create real social change in our communities,FIERCE believes we need to build a sizable membership base. We build our membership base through street outreach, monthly base-building events, and presentations at LGBTQ youth service organizations. To date, FIERCE has reached thousands of LGBTQ youth of color in NYC with our membership base exceeding 1300 LGBTQ youth of color.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a report in 2007, which stated that 20 – 40% of the 1.6 million homeless youth nationally are LGBTQ identified. These staggering statistics point to the opportunity and obligation to not only more systematically address the dire needs of an inevitably growing population at risk, but to also have the LGBTQ movement embrace and promote emerging young leaders and the critical issues impacting their lives.

FIERCE’s newly emerging National Program came out of an organizational decision to respond to a clear need to support LGBTQ youth organizing and LGBTQ youth leadership in broader social justice movement-building efforts. 

The National Program responds to two critical and timely challenges in the LGBTQ movement: 

A critical gap in youth leadershiparticularly youth of color and low-income youth.

A critical gap in the leadership and political power of young people through direct action organizing and leadership development. While many LGBTQ youth organizations focus solely on direct services or advocacy, we also need to support LGBTQ youth as political actors and change makers.

The primary purpose of FIERCE’s youth development and community-building programs is to build and foster a stronger and more stable sense of self and community. Our approach to youth development and community-building is not isolated from our organizing work. On the contrary, this work serves as the underpinning to the building and exercising of our collective community power.