Basic Rights Education Fund

Programs: Civic & statewide engagement: basic rights oregon seeks to serve oregon's lgbtq population in every community, every county and every corner of the state. A key component of this approach is locating and supporting the vibrant, grassroots activism that's already creating change around us. To help facilitate this effort, we organized a statewide leadership summit in eugene on may 7, 2016 that was attended by more than 150 community advocates and leaders from throughout oregon. The event helped to foster a shared understanding of our movement's values and strategies and ensure that small town and rural leaders, whose voices are often shut out of statewide organizing discussions were heard and respected. We had especially strong participation from youth and transgender communities. We know that in small towns and rural areas, awareness and acceptance of lgbtq identities lags that of urban settings. This factor, combined with anti-lgbtq stigma, can lead to hostility toward lgbtq community members, in the form of familial and social rejection, school bullying and workplace discrimination, leading many to hide their identities, or flee their communities for cities. To counter these dynamics, bref continues to organize trans justice 101 trainings in small towns and rural areas each year. Overall, our civic engagement efforts in 2016 continued to prioritize shifting public opinion and achieving policy victories in schools and workplaces while engaging in community building to enhance the lives of, and empower, those most impacted by the stigmas of homophobia, transphobia and racism in oregon.

racial justice work: since 2007, basic rights oregon has worked to counteract strategies pitting communities of color against lgbtq communties. We continue to center the leadership of people of color, largely through our ongoing our families leadership development progream for lgbtq people of color. We also continue to be key public allies, investing staff time and resources in coalition efforts to addresss xenophobia. In 2016 we rebuilt our families in ways that strengthen its ability to build community within the cohort, enhance the leadership and advocacy skills of cohort members and build active alumni networks: introducing 18-month cohort models, participant/mentor matches, quarterly retreats and monthly check-ins. Our current cohort has 13 participants from across the state and we organized four retreats in 2016.

transgender justice work: within the lgbtq community, transgender individuals face disproportionate rates of unemployment, poverty, harassment, assault and homelessness. Institutional barriers to health care and identity documents, as well as discrimination and mistreatment by government agencies contribute to these adverse outcomes. Ourtransgender justice program seeks to address and counter these conditions through our work with policy makers and state agency staff on three key issues: transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, full implementation of our state's existing nondiscrimination law and improving the safety and wellbeing of transgender oregonians in jails and prisons. Transgender people also face significant workplace challenges: ninety percent report experiencing some form of harassment or mistreatment on the job, more than twenty five percent report losing their job for being transgender, and the transgender population is four times more likely to live in poverty due to unemployment or underemployment than their non-transgender peers. To address these dire outcomes, we re-launched our fair workplace project (fwp) in 2016, which is designed to increase the number of oregon employers committed to providing an inclusive and affirming workplace for transgender employees. Through the project, we do outreach to business and community partners and offer a menu of engagement opportunities for businesses/employers that want to participate, including: training for employees and managers on the foundations of transgender inclusion, participation in a pre-training survey to assess specific needs, and technical assistance to human resources staff on model policies and curriculum. In 2016, we responded to nearly 20 requests for transgender inclusion training from area employers, ranging from state agencies and school districts to large service nonprofits and private companies. We delivered custom trainings to nearly 400 individuals.