GSA Conference

GSAs are powerful base-building opportunities for creating change in your schools and communities. This interactive workshop will uncover strategies to both sustain your current membership and bring new members into your GSA!

Youth leaders from U-32’s Seeking Social Justice will present on how to organize for social change, such as changing district policies, creating workshops for teachers and peers, fundraising, staging marches, walkouts, and other protests. They will focus on the step-by-step process, including building measurable objectives, communicating with people in power, and building support. The audience will be invited to share issues in their community that are important to them and will work with presenters to build a measurable action plan.

Learn about using transformative practices to create a set of values that will then guide you in developing community agreements, not just for Outright but for your GSAs or maybe even your friend group!

In this workshop, we will explore identity through narratives. We all have unique stories about the names we choose for ourselves or go by, the things that bring us joy and hope, and the values we hold in our community. Storytelling brings people together and can offer a foundation for collective organizing and liberation. Our Stories offers a space to explore all of this and more through conversation, reflecting on poems, and sharing your story in any form that speaks to you.

The systems and institutions that make up our society - including the healthcare system - are built to maintain injustices

and continue to exploit our differences, which perpetuates hate,

limiting our choices, and impacting our joy. In this workshop, we will use art and storytelling to queer up negative experiences of healthcare and reimagine them, dreaming together of the liberated, queer affirming healthcare we all deserve. (Note - this workshop does not provide medical advice).

We are committed to advancing liberation and social justice, building a more affirming and accountable society for all - including in our sexual health education! Enter the Gender Unicorn, a teaching tool developed by trans youth that Outright has used to educate adults and youth alike about the galaxy of ways that gender and sexuality can be expressed, and experienced. Learn how to use this tool to bring gender liberation education to your GSA, sex ed classroom, and community - including how to improve and build upon it with your own knowledge.

In this youth-led workshop, we'll give an overview of intergenerational trauma sharing interviews from students, parents/caregivers, and psychologists. We'll discuss the challenges that parents who came to the U.S. as refugees face with the education system. We'll also discuss the experiences of non-refugee families. We'll invite participants to investigate their experiences with intergenerational trauma and imagine ways of healing. We hope that people will leave this workshop with ideas of how to break the cycle of trauma within their schools and communities.

Come ready to dream, create, and work together. During this session you will have a chance to figure out how to apply three different areas of change work to a problem -- using peers, protest, and performance. Some topics that will be discussed include youth homelessness, reproductive rights, and dating violence. Bring your passion project on any topic because you will have time to apply the strategies to your interest! Join for some learning, strategizing, and designing different creative solutions to problems that you see in your world.