We here at Equality PA are proud to congratulate the Attic Youth Center on its recent ad campaign targeting anti-gay bullying in the City of Philadelphia. The campaign’s posters can be found on buses and in the subway, advocating “It’s OK to Be You.” Long praised for its afterschool work with LGBT youth, the center aims to provide these young adults with a message of acceptance in the face of societal pressures to sequester one’s sexuality and/or gender identity.
Attic Youth Center Director Carrie Jacobs initiated the program in the face of Seattle-based activist Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project.” A collection of YouTube videos filmed by LGBT adults and allies of the movement, the project’s theme of an ideal future is taken by some to mean that the present must be tolerated rather than celebrated. Jacobs and others at the Attic Youth Center amended the project’s goals – choosing to focus on specific elements of the LGBT rights movement’s struggle and framing their posts as “It Gets Better When...” or “It Gets Better If…”. Through this program, the center was able to expand its already developed adult-youth LGBT mentorship program, helping young adults to thrive in the present and envision a more open future simultaneously.
After a horrible string of nationally-publicized LGBT suicides this past fall as well as research which demonstrates a clear relationship between teenage homophobic bullying and later mental and health-related concerns for LGBT individuals, this ad campaign is truly necessary and welcomed. The team at Equality PA looks forward to seeing these posters across Philadelphia and hopes they will provide LGBT youth an added example of the community which supports and advocates for them every day.
More information can be found by Gregory Thomas’s article on the topic.
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