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The Spruce Foundation is proud to announce that its 2017 LGBTQ Grant will be awarded to The Attic Youth Center, the city’s only agency exclusively serving LGBTQ youth. The $5,000 grant supports Inner Rhythms, a new music therapy group focused on creative expression and personal storytelling; the project will engage both a professional music therapist and The Attic’s own clinical staff.
The Attic Youth Center was started in 1993 as an 8-week pilot project to offer safe spaces to underserved LGBTQ adolescents. Now an independent, multi-service youth agency, The Attic offers mental health services, wellness screening and support, and life skills programming such as job readiness trainings and enrichment classes, as well as best practice support for agencies looking to enhance their services to LGBTQ youth. Its curriculum is designed to empower its youth participants to become community leaders, and to help direct and support programming.
The board members of the Spruce Foundation are especially pleased to support The Attic Youth Center because of its commitment to understanding the specific vulnerabilities of its target audience, and addressing those risks by helping LGBTQ youth to develop a healthy sense of identity along with practical life skills.
“One of the things that the Board really appreciated about The Attic’s proposal was the fact that the organization put together a program based on what their youth wanted,” says Eliza Erickson, President of the Spruce Foundation. “The collaboration between staff and young people made us feel like we were supporting an initiative that would be meaningful and appreciated by the people who need it the most.”
The Attic Youth Center will collect its grant—alongside Spruce’s other 2017 awardees, in the focus areas of Arts Education, Health and Wellness, and Peacebuilding—at the annual Spruce Gala, which is to take place later this week on Friday, April 21 at the Center for Architecture and Design at 1218 Arch Street. Tickets are $85 and are available here.