It Gets Better Canada launches youth grants to support 2SLGBTQ+ students

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Content warning: This story mentions violence against 2SLGTBQ+ people and suicidal ideation.

When the U.S.-based It Gets Better Project first launched as a video campaign in 2010, it was in response to the suicides of teenagers who were bullied for being gay or perceived to be gay.

Thirteen years later, the project’s work is perhaps as relevant as ever — with 2SLGBTQ+ communities across the U.S. facing rising rates of hatred and violence. To combat this, the organization launched the 50 States 50 Grants initiative, where schools could apply for up to US $10,000 to fund a project supporting 2SLGBTQ+ students. 

But it’s not just American students who need this intervention.

This year, the youth grant program expanded into Canada, where at least one public school in each province and territory can also apply for up to US $10,000. 

Some of the project suggestions for schools that the organization provides are updating the school curriculum to be more 2SLBGTQ+ inclusive, launching a gender student alliance, and organizing a float in a local pride parade. The projects must include student involvement and must be completed within the upcoming school year which begins in September 2023. Applications for the grant are open until March 15, 2023.

“It’s [through] projects like this that hopefully we are able to empower students, to combat the bullying that they face and help them understand that their presence is valid,” says Omid Razavi, executive director of It Gets Better Canada, the affiliate organization running the grant application process.

As for why It Gets Better Canada is operating the Canadian expansion, Razavi says it’s because they have a better understanding of queer youth on the ground. “There are different nuances especially when we’re looking at our two-spirit and French communities, and isolated communities,” he says. 

The experiences that a lot of 2SLGBTQ+ youth in Canada face are still unsafe — and according to some research, increasingly so. 

Statistics Canada says 70 per cent of sexually and gender diverse youth between the ages of 15-17 report being bullied in various forms, such as verbal, physical and cyberbullying, in a 2022 study. Those who reported being bullied were also more prone to negative health outcomes such as suicide ideation and substance abuse. 

The Canadian Medical Association Journal also reported transgender adolescents are more likely to have suicidal thoughts by fivefold, in comparison to non-transgender and heterosexual adolescents. 

Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, says schools across the country have the potential to contribute a lot of harm: “[Schools are] a key driver in establishing our ideas of gender, our ideas of sexuality, things that we consider ‘normal’ in society,” Owusu-Akyeeah says. “Education is a huge institution because you’re mandated to go to school for a long time and young people are in schools for a significant portion of their day.” 

But queer and trans students themselves are already making schools more inclusive, Owusu-Akyeeah says. 

“By virtue of them being themselves in schools, and doing so loudly, and building on the ongoing activism in school spaces to allow queer trans youth to be present without barriers, schools are having to catch up,” she says. “Administrations are having to catch up. Policies have to catch up. As a result of that there’s been this institutional desire to see that inclusion be part of the fabric in schools.”

Razavi also notices the student-led initiative at making schools more 2SLGBTQ+ inclusive, which is why he finds the It Gets Better grant impactful. “Nobody understands what youth are going through like youth,” he says.

Last year, the organization saw students use the grant to lead 2SLGBTQ+ projects which lead to some schools raising their pride flags year round, Razavi says. 

“When you think about what that means, for anybody who’s in the queer community, the students who see that flag, feel safe, feel seen, feel like they have access there. It is a huge statement.”  

For Owusu-Akyeeah, genuinely making schools more inclusive for queer and trans youth means changing the schools’ entire curriculum. “It should not end at sex education,” she says.

“A truly inclusive and progressive education would have all the topics [include] trans and queer people and ideologies.”  

However, Owusu-Akyeeah says, with this desire for schools becoming more inclusive for 2SLGBTQ+ students comes pushback from people who reject this inclusivity, especially from people with power. She mentions Premier of Ontario Doug Ford’s revamping the province’s sex education curriculum, and Conservative leader Pierre Poiliviere’s questionable stances on LGBTQ+ communities since being a member of parliament as examples. 

 “At the end of the day, the people who deal with the biggest harms of [this pushback] are the youngest people in our communities who do not have the most power by virtue of their age,” she says.

These are real experiences for a grade 11 student who will go by the name Alex Smith to protect his identity. Smith says that it can be hard for students of his community to fit in. 

“It sounds obvious, but as a guy who is gay, it can be lonely sometimes,”says Smith, who attends highschool in the Halton Region in Ontario. Smith says it can be difficult to be friends with girls and heterosexual boys.
“Where do we go? Where do we belong? It’s hard for us to really find our place,” he says. 

“It does rub off on me when I see people hanging out with their groups. I have my own groups but there’s a barrier where I can’t fully relate,” he says. “Sometimes I try to be like, ‘yeah, that’s just how it’s always going to be,’ but I don’t want to have to keep saying ‘that’s just how it’s going to be.’ I think we can do a lot better.”

For Will Rollo, a grade 12 trans-masculine student who identifies as bisexual, having a grant like the one launched by It Gets Better is an encouraging opportunity for his community in being more included in school. 

“There have been so many times where I go to an administrator asking for support on a major level, and while most have had the best intentions in mind I’m often met with phrases like “it’s just not feasible” or “we don’t have the funds for that,” says Rollo, who attends H.B Beal Secondary School in London, Ontario. “The chance to have systemic, devoted monetary resources to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ students could completely alter their everyday educational experience.”

Rollo, who led more than 100 students from his highschool in a walk out last year in protest of an anti-LGBTQ+ bill in Florida and Texas, has been a student at H.B Beal since the ninth grade. While he says his school has been “amazing in taking initiatives to promote tolerance and acceptance,” especially with the school’s Gender Student Alliance, hosting 2SLGBTQ+ sessions where students get to offer their input while also learning more about the community itself, and offering non-mandatory sensitivity training to educators and administrators, he does see more room for support. 

He says, if he could make improvements to his school, he’d install gender neutral change rooms and improve gender neutral washrooms that are currently in place. 

“These are seemingly simple things that every student encounters, but for queer and gender-diverse students navigating these spaces can create a barrier between them and educational equity,” Rollo says.  

For Smith, he hopes to see a change in the school curriculum to include more of Canada’s 2SLGBTQ+ history. 

“If we claim that Canada is as diverse and multicultural as we are, then we should be able to see that be reflected in our history,” he says. “I feel like that hasn’t been accomplished yet with our current curriculum’s textbooks. I think the more visible that becomes in the future, the easier it is to work against that culture of aggression and oppression.” 

But is $10,000 feasible in achieving an updated school curriculum? For Smith, he says he’s a bit hesitant.

“[Queer and trans exclusion is] definitely more of a school board issue than an individual school issue,” Smith says. “It also feels like a lot to constantly have to advocate for yourself and for my peers when I know that there are teachers and people higher up in the school board and staff and principals that have more access to making changes happening.” 

Owusu-Akyeeah has similar sentiments. 

“I’m actually ecstatic that It Gets Better Canada is able to have a program like this and to be able to support 2SLGBTQ+ youth activism,” she says “But the second part of me goes back to thinking how the state is failing us and forcing this model of charity to ensure that communities are able to sustain themselves. It’s an interesting dynamic.”

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