We’re excited to announce Born This Way Foundation’s funding of $5,000,000 USD to 55 youth-centered organizations across 11 countries through the Kindness in Community Fund, made possible with support from partners including Pivotal, Cotton On Foundation, Sephora, Haus Labs, and others.
We invite you to celebrate, support, and learn how you can get involved with these youth-centered organizations below!
BRAZIL
Centro de Acolhida e Cultura Casa 1: A welcoming space for the LGBTQIAP+ population, always taking into consideration intersectionalities such as gender expression and identity, sexual orientation, race, and class.
Instituto Fazendo História: Works to collaborate with the development of children and adolescents living in shelters. They support children and young people separated from their families to become capable of building powerful life stories, interrupting a cycle of abandonment, rupture, and violence
CANADA
Beat the Streets: A community-led charity that advances the education, well-being, and leadership of low-income youth (ages 6–24) in the Greater Toronto Area through wrestling, combat sports, life skills, and job readiness programs.
Northern Mosaic Network: Dedicated to creating a safer space for 2SLGBTQIPA+ youth, through raising awareness about 2SLGBTQIPA+ issues and identities, helping 2SLGBTQIPA+ youth build confidence and capacity across the NWT, and being actively anti-racist and challenge colonial systems when delivering programs and services.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague Pride: Aims to create a respectful and safe environment where LGBT+ people can be their true selves.
HONG KONG
Body Banter: Empowers youth voices in conversations about body image and mental health. Through their programs and workshops, they aim to foster curiosity and courage in the communities they work with, helping them navigate conversations about body image and mental health topics on their own terms.
Gender Empowerment: Supporting the transgender community in Hong Kong since 2015. By providing the appropriate information and resources, they help trans individuals go through the different stages of their gender transition, to adapt to the changes in their appearances, bodies, daily lives and social relationships.
KELY Support Group 啟勵扶青會: Equips young people with the skills, knowledge, and opportunities needed to support themselves and each other. Through collaboration with schools and other partners and by addressing the challenges youth face in the areas of drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, and overall positive development, they aim to empower them to take charge of their own lives and make informed choices.
ITALY
ARCIGAY: Promotes and defends LGBTQIA+ rights, fighting violence, discrimination, and inequality. The organization works for political, legislative, cultural, and social change through advocacy, awareness campaigns, and public engagement.
Gay Center / Gay Help Line: Manages the toll-free number 800 713 713, the Gay Help Line, offering medical, psychological, legal, and employment support to LGBTQ+ people, victim of homotransphobia, including migrants and people with disabilities facing multiple discrimination.
POLAND
Fundacja GrowSPACE: Works to achieve real social change, focusing on children, youth, and minority groups, particularly LGBTQ+ individuals, those at risk of exclusion, and those experiencing systemic violence.
Warsaw House Foundation: Protects LGBTQ+ youth in Poland from the harms of homelessness and social and economic exclusion and empower them with the tools to live independently.
SINGAPORE
Oogachaga: To enable lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals to make informed decisions that strengthen their beings and achieve a fulfilling life.
SOUTH AFRICA
Khululeka Grief Support: Strengthens the emotional well-being and resilience of children, adolescents, and their caregivers by supporting them through experiences of trauma, grief and loss through evidence-based, grief-informed education, community-based programmes, and culturally sensitive care, we create safe, responsive environments that foster healing, connection, and growth.
Lefika La Phodiso: Provides safe spaces in which creativity and containment nourish emotional development and strengthen relationships. Our mission is to build capacity for empathy by training groups of community art counsellors dedicated to psycho-social transformation.
PHOLA NPO: Delivers culturally sensitive community based mental health interventions to vulnerable and marginalised people, groups and communities.
SPAIN
Associació Rosa Peris: A social organization founded in Barcelona to ensure equal access to education and designs inclusive, participatory programs that respond to the realities of vulnerable young people, offering psychosocial support, mentorship, and community.
Fundación Eddy-G (Esperanza, Diversidad, Dignidad y Generosidad): Provides shelter and unconditional support to LGBTIQA+ youth at risk, freeing them from the cycle of violence and discrimination. They empower them for an independent life, offering free housing, educational and job guidance, so they can build a future full of hope and possibilities.
UNITED KINGDOM
Beyond: A youth mental health charity tackling the growing mental health crisis affecting young people in the UK. Their expertise and resources help those working with young people to access barrier-free mental health education and the most effective mental health support.
Blossom LGBT: Empowers LGBTQIA+ young adults and engages wider society to address the systemic barriers of discrimination, poverty, and social disadvantage faced by young queer people for the broader public benefit. They equip them with the tools, support, and opportunities they need to thrive through education, advocacy, and community programmes.
Brent Centre for Young People: A pioneering UK charity empowering adolescent aged 11–25 across Northwest London to build emotionally resilient lives. Rooted in over 50 years of clinical expertise, they deliver free, evidence-based psychodynamic therapies, including one-to-one, group, family, and innovative programmes like Adolescent Exploratory Therapy and “Sport & Thought,” tailored to the unique developmental needs of young people.
Sister System: Exists to bridge the gap between care-affected girls (aged 13-24) and mainstream society. Through trauma-informed, culturally attuned mentoring, workshops and accredited qualification programmes, they support girls to develop resilience, confidence and life skills.
UNITED STATES
AIM Youth Mental Health: Bridges the gap between research and access to care for youth who may be struggling with their mental health by finding, funding, and implementing evidence-based treatments, and empowering youth to discover their own mental health solutions. All of this is in service of our vision: a world of mentally healthy youth.
Aliento: Serves students, Dreamers, and immigrant families to transform trauma into hope and action. supports students and families through education initiatives, arts & healing programming, leadership development, civic engagement, and policy.
Artist Mentorship Program: Supports youth ages 15–25 navigating the trauma of homelessness by creating community, fostering relationships, and providing music and arts mentorship that enhances self-esteem, strengthens confidence, and builds pathways out of homelessness.
Attic Youth Center: Creates opportunities for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth to develop into healthy, independent civic-minded adults within a safe and supportive community and to promote the acceptance of LGBTQ youth in society.
BAGLY: A youth-led, adult supported social support organization, committed to social justice, and creating, sustaining, and advocating for programs and services for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) youth communities.
Cafe Momentum: Works to transform young lives by equipping our community’s justice-involved. youth with life skills, education, and employment opportunities to help them achieve their full potential.
Center on Halsted: Advances community and secures the health and well-being of the LGBTQ+ people of Chicagoland and throughout the Midwest.
Centre LGBT+: Connects the community through LGBTQ+ education, advocacy, and activities in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
COR, Inc: Offers support and tools for Atlanta youth to overcome structural disadvantages and flourish at school and beyond.
Hopebound: Works to revolutionize access to mental health and wellness support for young people from historically marginalized communities. They utilize emerging master’s and doctoral level clinicians as their providers, many of whom share the background of their youth, and focus on providing them with expert training to ensure that the low cost of their services does not translate to a lower quality of care.
I Am Human Foundation: Transforming how youth mental health is understood and supported via programs that are youth-informed and community-rooted, offering free counseling, healing arts, and workforce development as pathways to stability and wellness.
Inside Out Youth Services: Builds access, equity, and power with LGBTQIA2+ young people ages 13-24 in the Tava Kaavi (Pikes Peak) region.
LYRIC Center for LGBTQQ+ Youth: Builds community and inspire positive social change through education enhancement, career trainings, health promotion, and leadership development with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ+) youth, their families, and allies of all races, classes, genders, and abilities.
Libera: Aims to identify and eliminate barriers in the lives of women and teens in West Virginia.
National Youth Foundation: Promotes diversity, inclusion, and gender equality through innovative literary programs.
Our Minds Matter (OMM): Works toward a day when no teen dies by suicide. As part of the ecosystem of support necessary to solve the complex, interconnected challenges driving the youth mental health crisis, OMM fills a key gap through a model that is school-based, peer-led, culturally responsive, and research-driven.
Outlast Arts and Education, Inc.: An organization that celebrates, empowers, and advances Native and BIPOC youth in South Dakota and beyond through media arts, education, and community building.
Project LETS: A grassroots organization led by people with lived experience of Disability, mental illness, and neurodivergence– dedicated to dismantling carceral mental health systems/cultures and building culturally responsive models of holistic bodymindspirit care.
ProjectQ: Aims to turn cycles of violence into cycles of success by ending the foster care to prison pipeline for LGBTQ youth of color.
QUEERSPACE Collective: Creates space for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth to feel safe and empowered to be their true selves. Through mentorship, workshops, the QS Youth Center, and group hangouts, 2SLGBTQIA+ youth develop increased self-esteem, reduced social isolation, and a greater sense of belonging, cultural identity and pride.
Rainbow Project Sioux Falls: Provides community-based programming that support LGBTQ2S+ youth and other marginalized groups. Services include safe space events, peer connection opportunities, wellness activities, and educational workshops designed to foster inclusion, reduce isolation, and support identity development.
Ryan Bartel Foundation: Aims to prevent youth suicide through awareness, upstream educational programs and activities that support and empower youth, families and the community at-large.
Spill The Tea Cafe: A youth mental health nonprofit in Honolulu creating an affirming, trauma‐informed community where young people-especially LGBTQIA+, Māhū, Native Hawaiian, and system‐impacted youth—can access free care without judgment. They pair evidence‐based therapy with youth leadership, peerconnection, and Hawaiʻi‐rooted practices so healing feels human, not clinical.
Stepping Stones of the Roaring Fork Valley: Cultivates strong mentoring relationships and community spaces for youth ages 10-24 to foster personal growth, compassion, and responsibility.
The Alliance for LGBTQ Youth: provides mental health and care coordination services and leadership development that centers the lives and experiences of LGBTQ youth in South Florida. We serve, nurture, and empower LGBTQ youth, their families, and their communities in affirmation of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
The Garage, a Teen Cafe: Provide a safe, inclusive drop-in space after-school where teens can connect with friends and access programs and services as needed. We provide
community, promote equity, reduces barriers, and expand access to essential mental health support to meet each teen right where they are.
Lambert House LGBTQ+ Youth Center: Empowers LGBTQ+ youth through the development of leadership, social, and life skills. Our evidence-based programs are delivered in-person in 11 regional locations in Greater Seattle. In addition, our online programs have drawn youth who live in 28 U.S. states and 10 countries.
The Laurel Foundation: Serves transgender and gender-diverse youth, as well as children, youth, and families affected by HIV/AIDS.
The Unbreakable Organization: Supports individuals and communities who’ve been impacted by gun violence in the aftermath of tragedy.
Time Out Youth: Supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth by offering vital programs, fostering unconditional acceptance, and creating safe spaces for self-expression through leadership, community support and advocacy.
Trans Up Front Illinois: Dedicated to educating, advocating, and supporting the LGBTQIA+ community, with a focus on transgender and gender-nonconforming youth, teens, and young adults ages 4–25 and their support systems. They strive to eliminate financial barriers, promote understanding, safety, and equality, and create lasting change by partnering with families, schools, workplaces, organizations, and corporations.
We Are Family: Provides affirming spaces for LGBTQI+ and ally youth up to the age of 24 in South Carolina.
Youth Pride, Inc.: Meets the unique, ongoing needs of LGBTQ+ youth and young adults through direct service, support, advocacy, and education.
