Outloud hits fundraising goal

ST. ALBERT - Staff at St. Albert's LGBTQ+ support organization are thrilled after raising $50,000 in June to support youth in the community.

Outloud, an organization that supports LGBTQ+ youth and their families, started fundraising in June after there was a spike in suicide attempts and mental health problems among the youth seeking support.

"We are overwhelmed," Kelsey Robbins, executive director of Outloud, said after the $50,000 was raised through the community.

In April, Terry Soetart, Outloud's then-executive director asked council for the $50,000 and said the community was facing a youth suicide crisis and pleaded for money to hire staff to support the kids.

Council denied their request for funding and instead, the organization turned to the community, who rallied and donated the funds throughout June.

Outloud helps about 60 youth every week and has helped nearly 300 kids as young as six in the past year. Typically, the youth-to-staff ratio is 20-1, which means staff is heavily outnumbered and can't offer adequate support to struggling kids.

The new money will allow Outloud to bring on one or two part-time staff members to help run programming and allow the specialized staff to support the struggling kids.

"The hope is that we can at least bring in a couple of other people so that our staff who are specialists in supporting these kids can pull kids aside if they need one-on-one support, and other people can hold the space," Robbins said.

The organization has been in the community for 10 years and has seen the number of kids needing support grow in recent years. 

"We doubled what we're offering for programming. We've really amped stuff up over the summer," Robbins said.

"That was the goal for this fundraising. It just kind of helps us meet the growing need for the rest of the year."

About 80 per cent of the youth Outloud supports are from St. Albert, and Robbins estimates most of the remaining kids are from surrounding rural areas. But rural youth often can't get to Outloud in person, as public transit outside urban centres is non-existent.

As a result, Robbins said Outloud plans to start online programs to help the youth who can't get into the city easily.

Outloud's fundraising drive was kicked off by a generous donation pledge from an individual who didn't want to be named. They pledged to match all donations Outloud raised, up to $25,000.

As a result, the organization was able to raise the funds by the end of June, Robbins said, just squeaking over the $50,000 amount. Much of the remaining $25,000 came in tiny bits from businesses and community members. 

"It comes at a really great time for us because we are feeling the heat of the hate this month and this was a really good reminder that we do have support from the greater St. Albert community and there are people who really stand behind what we are doing."

June, which is pride month across the province, saw anti-LGBTQ+ activities spike.

In St. Albert, a slew of hateful pamphlets were dropped off in two school playgrounds in the community.

In Westlock, some local community members tried to prevent the first-ever rainbow crosswalk from being painted in the town and went to their town council to try to stop the event. Outloud members went to Westlock for the crosswalk painting in late June to support the local youth and ensure there were no hateful protests at the event.

While the $50,000 is a good solution to support local LGBTQ+ youth for the remainder of the year, Robbins said Soetart will be stepping into a fund development position, so he can apply for grants and help find additional sources of money.

"We're constantly applying for grants," Robbins said.

"(Soetart) can now be in more of a fund development role and that adds a little bit of more sustainability so that he can focus specifically on making sure that we can keep this going."