Transgender business program honored for helping people build economic power

-

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recognized a local trans nonprofit this week for its program supporting trans and nonbinary entrepreneurs.

During its regular meeting at San Francisco City Hall on Wednesday, the board bestowed its Certificate of Honor to Transgender District in recognition of the group’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program, according to local LGBTQ+ outlet The Bay Area Reporter.

Related

San Francisco votes unanimously to become a sanctuary city for trans & nonbinary people
It’s now the largest city in the U.S. to protect gender-affirming care for minors.

Citing a 2021 Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research study, which found that only four percent of small businesses in the U.S. are owned by queer entrepreneurs, out Supervisor Rafael Mandelman applauded Transgender District for addressing the disparity “by providing valuable support to trans entrepreneurs, who face significant barriers when following their small business dreams.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Since its inception in 2020, Tenderloin-based Transgender District’s Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program has helped 37 trans and nonbinary people launch businesses. The annual four-month program provides webinars, mentorship, one-on-one coaching, and more, all free of charge to participants, as well as a $10,000 seed grant to those who finish.

Mandelman went on to praise some of the program’s graduates, who have gone on “to pursue a wide variety of business endeavors.”

“Thanks to support from the district, program graduate Jessica Lamb founded Open Doors HR, an LGBTQ+ and AAPI-led HR team. Avery Zeus started a catering company, Concept Kitchen, which works to create community through food, providing meals for many LGBTQ+ [individuals],” he said.

Carlo Gomez Arteaga, co-executive director of Transgender District along with Breonna McCree, accepted the honor Wednesday, surrounded by participants in the 2024 program as well as Transgender District program director Sam Favela, and members of the San Francisco Office of Transgender Initiatives, including Transgender District co-founder Honey Mahogany.

“Our programs are vital,” Arteaga said, noting that of the four percent figure cited by Mandelman “an even smaller percentage of those are trans-led or nonbinary-led businesses.”

“So we really want to uplift the importance of what this funding and these opportunities mean for our community,” he continued, “especially during these years where we’re ‘otherized’ and many in our community are criminalized for just existing when we just want dignity and the ability to have civil rights and liberties as anyone else in the U.S.”

Arteaga noted that San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which provides funding for the program, has been “instrumental in helping us not only further the ideas into fruition of our entrepreneurs but also funding the next stages of what that looks like for us.”

Arteaga went on to highlight the confidence Transgender District’s program builds in its graduates as well as the importance of “the leadership of a city like San Francisco that can work towards expanding the tapestry of what our community businesses look like, and extending that opportunity to our community’s most vulnerable and marginalized residents.”

As The Bay Area Reporter noted, the 2024 Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program is already well underway, concluding next month. Mandelman recognized participants in this year’s program present at City Hall on Wednesday, telling them, “I am so excited to watch you thrive and, in turn, contribute to San Francisco’s vibrant small business community.”



source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/07/transgender-business-program-honored-for-helping-people-build-economic-power/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prosecutors decline to charge suspect identified in alleged anti-trans mass shooting

-
Image
Prosecutors in Chicago have failed to charge a suspect identified in photo lineups as the shooter who killed a trans woman and her mother in a home invasion in January . Three other victims were wounded, including two other trans women. The suspect, who remains unidentified because he hasn’t been charged, has two other pending cases in Cook County court, records reveal: a felony residential burglary count and a misdemeanor count of domestic battery. The 19-year-old suspect lives in the same apartment complex as the victims did, on Chicago’s South Side. The police report for the mass shooting details how two people “kicked in the front door and began shooting” at about 1:40 p.m. on January 23. Unique Banks, 20, and her mother Alexsandra Olmo, 43, were killed at the scene. Three other victims were hospitalized in critical condition. One witness told investigators they had seen two males running north from the courtyard building wearing green camouflage. The shooting took place o...
Read more

Census Bureau will start testing new LGBTQ+ questions on its yearly survey

-
Image
The U.S. Census Bureau, after nearly a year of pushing the Biden administration, will begin testing questions pertaining to LGBTQ+ identity on its American Community Survey (ACS). These questions would ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. The Bureau put out a Federal Register notice signifying that this is the last chance for the public to give comment on all pending ACS questions, including those pertaining to LGBTQ+ individuals. The deadline given for comment is May 30, with an online form provided for any feedback on these questions. The wording for these questions can be found on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website . After the Bureau’s deadline, it will be submitting the questions to the Office of Management and Budget, where they will await approval for testing in the summer. The ACS asks questions about demographic, socioeconomic, and housing-related topics annually. New questions must undergo a rigorous approval and testing p...
Read more

Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings

-
Image
Conservatives were already upset about Target over its LGBTQ+-inclusive Pride collection. But now they’re angry over fake AI-generated images that show the store selling “Satanic” clothing. The images show kids wearing clothes with inverted pentagrams and goat heads and a store display with a red, goat-headed mannequin. The images were created by Facebook user Dan Reese with the AI program Midjourney, Reuters reported . A Target spokesperson told the publication that it “has never sold” the pictured items, and the items aren’t available on the store’s website. Related Stories Brave gay man yells “Praise Satan” & throws Bible in fire at pastor’s book-burning The husbands kissed as congregants screamed in disgust. “That guy has balls of steel,” one commenter wrote under the video. A Facebook page called Christian Patriots posted the images and wrote , “Look at the faces on these children, I feel in my spirit, they even knew there was something satanic with making t...
Read more