PENNSYLVANIA EQUALITY PROJECT INC

Pennsylvania's LGBTQ+ community needs to live free of discrimination under the law. Thus, we seek passage of the Pennsylvania Fairness Act to limit the impact of discrimination in housing, education, public accommodations, credit, and employment. Additionally, we believe that LGBTQ+ youth can live to their potential when they can openly live their true identity. Therefore, we will work with educational institutions to help them improve their anti-bullying programs. Likewise, those same youth should not be forced to live contrary to their identity. We oppose the use of conversion or "ex-gay" therapy on minors and adults who are incapable of making their own medical and mental health decisions. We are actively working with our supporters to sign petitions to pass a ban on the use of conversion therapy by state licensed medical and psychiatric practitioners.

We believe that LGBTQ+ cannot live to their fullest potential without adequate resources in their local communities to address their needs. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have numerous resources, but northwestern Pennsylvania lacks a Community Resource Center. Likewise, LGBTQ+ people who are at risk for homelessness have few LGBTQ+ welcome resources in northwestern Pennsylvania. Our goal is to open a center that combines both these concepts into one facility. At this facility, our clients would have access to computer facilities for preparing resumes, taking GED classes, and conducting job searches. We want to offer our clients access to meals, shelter, and hygiene facilities in one location. Further, we would like to hire on-site social workers who can better facilitate acting on our clients' behalf when interacting with governmental agencies such as the Department of Public Welfare and the Department of Health. We want our center to be open and inviting. Thus, it will be a smoke-free facility with smoking cessation classes offered on site.

Once we can demonstrate the efficacy of such a facility in northwestern Pennsylvania, our goal is to open similar facilities in other rural locations across Pennsylvania based on the local need and geographical proximity to other similar programs run by other agencies.

We will be working with our banking partner, Marquette Savings Bank to provide us financial guidance as we grow. We will be working with community organizations such as the Greater Erie Alliance for Equality, the Northwest PA Pride Alliance, and TransFamily of Northwest PA for ideas about the best way to go about opening our Community Resource and Drop In Center. We will be reaching out to the Erie Community Foundation and participating in their annual fundraising programs that provide matching donations. We will continue to build our social media exposure and our team of volunteer leaders who live and work in various parts of Pennsylvania.

Our grant research and writing team will be supplying our Board of Directors with input on a quarterly basis, and our legislative standing committee will share with the Board input as we receive it from Harrisburg. We will reach out via LinkedIn and other social media outlets to school districts and other institutions across Pennsylvania to gain exposure for our webinars and other training materials. Finally, we will continue to launch and complete 3 to 4 research surveys and studies per year to provide us the data we need to convince our donors of the feasibility to meet, and the urgent need for each of our established goals.

Pennsylvania Equality Project has built a significant following among Pennsylvania legislators and LGBTQ+ leaders. We are recognized as one of the only grassroots statewide LGBTQ+ organizations in Pennsylvania. To that end, we have over 28,000 people who read the material we post on social media on a daily basis. We also have standing committees who will be preparing our grant applications, our financial strategy, and building on our previous successful fundraising endeavors.

Our survey and study on discrimination has already been published on our website, and our survey and study on coming out will be published by December 31, 2019. Both of these studies have been or will be presented to the ranking leadership of various committees in both the Pennsylvania House and Senate, as well as the Governor and the Governor's Council on LGBTQ+ Affairs. Our latest survey entitled the Pennsylvania Needs Assessment Survey will be released on January 1 and run until February 29, 2019. We will be publishing our results on March 31, 2019.

The Community Drop In Center will require considerable upfront operating capital to become operational. Thus, we have begun developing online webinars and in-person training seminars about LGBTQ inclusion, history, culture, and human resource strategies for making all employees welcome on the job site. Furthermore, we are developing webinars intended for educators to decrease bullying at school and online. We intend to charge a nominal fee for use of these programs and make them available to all of Pennsylvania's 501 school districts and the myriad charter and parochial schools across the Commonwealth.

We have found a suitable location for our Community Drop In Center in Edinboro, PA; however, we will continue searching for additional prospective alternate locations. Our grant writing team will be gathering in January ahead of our Board meeting to search and apply for various grants to help with the start up costs. At our February 2020 Board meeting, we will also consider whether to charge membership dues for selected content on our website.