In 1996, a group of adults in DuPage County came together with concerns that, outside of Chicago, there were very few agencies, organizations or services to support LGBTQ youth. Two years later, they had organized a group called "Questioning Youth Center" and opened up the first drop-in facility in Naperville.
Anne Rickleff, a graduate student and intern with the organization, remembered its beginnings as a quiet and slow progression. "The charter members were worried about risk," she recalled. "They said 'OK, this is Republican land and these people are very conservative.'"
Today the organization is known as Youth Outlook. Its four drop-in centers now cover three counties: DuPage, Kane and DeKalb. The addresses of the centers are not posted on-line. "It's to maintain safety," Rickleff said. "We're talking about young kids."
In its first 10 years, the organization served over 1,800 LGBTQ teens offering them a safe place to meet and discuss a wide range of topics from how to start a gay-straight alliance at their schools, to how to form healthy relationships or how LGBTQ people are portrayed in the media.
According to Rickleff, it is the only agency in the area. "When it comes to providing these services for LGBTQ youth, after Chicago, we are it," she said.
One of Youth Outlook's participants is a 15-year-old sophomore at a high school in Naperville who was outed as a trans male. "There's no question that he's a boy," Rickleff asserted. "But he's been bullied and verbally harassed with derogatory and slang words thrown at him. When he went to the dean of the high school, he was told, on two separate occasions: 'You chose this. It's your fault so just deal with it.'" Rickleff said that the teen has since been diagnosed with depression and engages in regular cutting. "He's said that if he didn't have Youth Outlook, where he can be with kids like him, he probably would not be here," she added.
In 2012, the East Aurora District 131 school board voted to rescind a policy that would have protected transgender children. "We'd gone in there that year and did a whole program that focused on safety [for them]," Rickleff said. "We were not asked back because the policy was overturned."
On Feb. 28, Youth Outlook will team with the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance and the Community Network: Professionals Supporting LGBTQ Youth in order to hold a county-wide day session for educators and community advocates to discuss issues relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and receive information about laws, policies and research that is helping to make schools safer for all young people. The event will be hosted by Alcatel-Lucent's LGBTQ employee resource group at the company's facilities at 1960 Lucent Lane in Naperville. The event is free and begins at 8 a.m.
Rickleff said she believes the day will prove to be an essential step forward in an area where bullying of LGBTQ kids in schools is pervasive and children as young as six are forced to question their self-worth. "Every single youth I have come into youth I meet has wondered 'why is it wrong to just be me and why does every adult I come into contact with, want to change me?'" She said. "When you hear the stories about what they're going through in school it's absolutely terrifying."
David Fischer is the program director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance—a Chicago-based organization supporting LGBTQ youth in Illinois schools and communities. Fischer said that the event in Naperville is part of the Professional Development the organization provides to schools and communities across Illinois. "We know through research that it's the single most effective way to create a safer school environment for young people."
This is the fourth year the event has taken place and, according to Fischer, the response from educators and school personnel has been overwhelmingly positive. "Folks are excited. They want to have information," he said. "In working people studying to be teachers, counselors and social workers, we know that they haven't been prepared to deal with any of these issues before they step into a school. They are instead bombarded with anti-LGBTQ language. They don't know the laws and policies that protect them and their students. They don't know what their responsibilities are and that's an unfair situation."
Fischer—a former employee of Youth Outlook—said that when he was in high school, resources for LGBTQ kids didn't exist. "It was so far outside the Chicago area, that I didn't even know that pushing back against my school system was an option," he recalled. "The alliance exists so that young people everywhere in Illinois understand that pushing back against a system that oppresses them or engages in homophobia and transphobia is absolutely an option."
The deadline for registration for the event is Feb. 21. Participants can register online at bit.ly/1bBKah5 or contact Anne Rickleff anne.rickleff@youth-outlook.org .
