.My mission is to provide men and women who are incarcerated with a support system that enables us to heal properly, find and address what led us here and ultimately help provide the kind of support necessary for a successful reintegration in to society with an emphasis on the LGBTI + community.
That's my mission. I need help though. I don't want to lose you here though, so please read through this because you may be surprised at what is needed from people just like you.
I need educational materials. Not pens and paper but self help guides. I need things that are dealing with the gay community like getting out of prostitution, drugs or homelessness. We need encouraging stories and messages of inspiration. You may read something, an article or a book that makes you think "this really impacted my life"...I need that info!! What? What impacted your life? Yeah, gimme that! I am also interested in group therapy techniques. I need exercises that we can do as a group together that will build trust and bring out things that need to be addressed. Things like childhood abuse, domestic abuse and selfishness.
Other things we need is people willing to participate with us. Maybe you can give us an inspiring message, you know we live in a place where you may be able to do a Skype presentation from wherever you are. Our facility has that capacity, it will take some screening on the prisons part but it can be done, I've seen it. We also need local organizations to step up and be willing to communicate with us, even if its a general message, we need that.
We need books, if you are financially able to help, you don't have to throw some random dude in prison a bunch of money and hope it gets used for a good purpose. There are channels and accounts set up through DOC that are only for specific groups, like LGBTI Peer Support. But you can also send them to me as an individual and I will donate them to our library, where I can legally share it with the entire LGBT community here. I've already donated over 50 books and just absolutely can't wait to get more. In addition to books we will be asking for donations for next years Pride event here in prison where I intend to have a banquet for about 250 people. I have to have the funds raised in advance though.
We need letters and cards that are encouraging.
I need someone to build this website from a blog to an actual site with tabbed pages. I'd like a home page, a links page, a projects page and a few others where I can still have this blog but also have fixed and focused information that is easy to find and direct people to. I need someone to help here, either by doing it themselves or helping fund it.
So you see, what we need is help, these are things you can do. I need people who can look up stats and research and send it to me. News on gay movements and the latest in genetic research information, things that will affirm our identities were designed and not chosen.
I need to know of accepting religious places for LGBT people. Christian and other religions.
Yeah, simple things that are impossible for me, but that's why we have Solidarity, right?
Don't be silent, you can make a difference and help a whole bunch of people with some simple things. I promise I won't bite!
With Love
Jeff Utnage
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