As you know, this year at Magpie Girl, we are exploring the place “Where Soulcare and Worldcare Meets.” We want to know:
- Can we take care of ourselves (and our families, and our jobs) and have enough (emotion, money, time) to give away?
- Can we bring hope to dark places without burning out?
- Can we afford to fall in love with a cause?
Yes. Yes, we can.
To that end, Magpie Girl is proud to feature new projects where Art walks hand-in-hand with Service. (They make a nice couple, don’t you think?) Each of these projects will be funded through donations made to Kickstarter, an excellent site dedicated to helping artful start-ups micro-source the funding they need.
“Reteaching Gender and Sexuality is about helping young people to do more than just survive their teens; we want them thriving.” -Sid Jordan, Co-Director, Put this on the Map
This month our pledge goes to Put This on the Map– a group of young people who are ready to reteaching gender and sexuality in mind-blowing, creative ways. Their video blew my mind. In under 3 minutes, they introduced me to at least three paradigm-shifting concepts. And their stories, passion, and confidence made me cry. This group of youth are ready to SCHOOL you, (and Lord knows, we could all use some consciousness raising ’round here on this topic!)
Reteaching Gender and Sexuality from PUT THIS ON THE MAP on Vimeo.
Look, it’s true, it does get better…but do you the next generation to suffer until then? I didn’t think so. Together, we can click a button and help these folks create, not just a safe place, but a liberating space for youth. But we have to do so by Sunday, January 23rd, when all the Kickstarter pledges are due in. It would be swell if you could pledge today.
To learn more about this passionate project, Co-Director/Producer Sid Jordan is getting behind the mic to tell you more about this empowering film-and-teaching project. Sid, step right up!
1. How did you become passionate about your subject/project?
Reteaching Gender and Sexuality is a new approach to pervasive problems experienced by many queer and transgender people. As an adolescent, family conflict about my gender expression and sexuality resulted in me eventually leaving home before graduating high school. Now, after almost a decade of working with youth in the human services sector, I have witnessed so many young people who fall outside prescriptive norms of gender and sexuality in the unnecessary struggle for equal opportunity of success. My personal experiences and the experiences of those around me inspired me to create PUT THIS ON THE {MAP}; a documentary featuring the stories of 26 queer/trans youth in the suburbs of Seattle. I worked with my long-time colleague and friend Megan Kennedy, a licensed therapist and artist, to create a film that would represent a diversity of voices within a small region. In 2011, we have an amazing team of youth educations who will be taking on the road with us. The energy of the team is contagious and I can’t wait to see what we can do together!
2. How do you feel the film and tour helps care for the communities you are focusing on?
In 2010, the national media spotlighted a series of tragic LGBT youth suicides. The culprit was named “bullying”; and the answers varied from anti-bullying prevention programming, to “it gets better”, to “make it better”. These campaigns drew attention to a pre-existing problem of the high rates of suicides among queer/trans youth. Reteaching Gender and Sexuality is about helping young people to do more than just survive their teens; we want them to be thriving. We know we need to look deeper than bullying in order to address educational and health disparities among LGBTQ youth, as well as disproportionate incarceration rates, homelessness, and underemployment. . Reteaching Gender and Sexuality tour is a platform for queer/trans young people to speak out and be advocates for change that will help them thrive. It’s a campaign that goes to the heart of the matter.
3. How does your passion for world-care nourish you?
World-care and self-care are closely aligned in our work. Reteaching Gender and Sexuality views community’s health and wellness as a principal goal; our team’s personal nourishment or wellness is necessarily interrelated to that goal. Many of us have survived harassment or violence, family conflict, and housing insecurity; many of us have seen liberation work and creative/cultural production as key in our personal and community healing.
4. What else would like us to know about your project?
Our kickstarter campaign will create the base of funding we need to launch the Reteaching Gender and Sexuality tour this February – May 2011. Contributions go to support leadership development of our team, as well as equipment, travel, and stipends for our team of young educators. Readers can contact info@putthisonthemap.org to invite us to their communities!
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To help fund Put This on the Map click here. To read all Magpie Girl’s interviews in the Behind the Mic series, click here. I’d like to give a special shout-out to Jenn Renee Pekol of Freelance Unconvential Nun for all her help on these Kickstarter interviews. Thanks Jenn! We’ll see y’all next month with another project where soulcare and worldcare meet. Thanks for being here today.
Want to hear more from soulful creative and religious hybrids? Click here to see who else has stepped behind the mic.
New Here? Learn the lingo and find your tribe with Magpie Speak, my free ecourse. It’s a brand new vocabulary for soulcare, from my passionate heart to yours. 
Want to work with me in a small group setting? Join us at Flock, my online relig-ish community. One value, one practice, one month at a time, for one soulful year. Start any time. 
Leaving your old tribe? Ready to build a new soulful community? Soulretreats walks you through the goodbye/hello process. 
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Interviews
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
bravo – great video and interview! while i understand the good intentions behind “it gets better” – it felt a little like the equivalent of the “just say no!” campaign.
Stacy,
I liked “It Get’s Better” because of the heartfelt, simple way Dan and his partner told thier story to kick it off; and because all that testimony was like putting pressure on a wound. And immediate response — but not a long term solution. That’s what I like about Put it On The Map. They are talking about shifting entire paradigms for long term health and healings. Very inspiring!
Huzzah! They made their goal!
Congratulations to the youth educators and to Sid — and thank you, for shaping our world for the better.
Much Warmth,
Rachelle
Lovely blog!!!
rachelle – excellent point, and you are right. i like your analogy of putting pressure on a wound.