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Lifeworks merges with LA Gay and Lesbian Center
Dustin Lance Black’s being honored was not the only big news to come out of Saturday’s Live Out Loud event in Hollywood for Lifeworks Mentoring. It was also announced by Executive Director Michael Ferrera that the organization he co-founded to offer one-on-one, peer and group mentoring opportunities for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth ages 14-24 will merge with the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.“[It’s] a new relationship that will allow us to immediately allow us to expand our reach and our programming,” Ferrera said. “As of July 1, Lifeworks Mentoring will become Lifeworks and will merge with the largest LGBT organization in the world: the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. On that day, our new home will be The Village at Ed Gould Plaza and our youth will immediately benefit and have that safe and supportive environment that Harvey Milk envisioned.”
In making the announcement, Michael quoted the late Harvey Milk who once said, “All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.”
“This has been the mission of Lifeworks for four years now and we have served hundreds of LGBT youth in Los Angeles over that time,” he said. “We have many dreams for Lifeworks.”
The Center”s CEO Lorri L. Jean (pictured with Ferrera) noted that Lifeworks can help teens from falling through the cracks.
“Sadly the schools, churches and other organizations that should nurture all young people are often unsupportive or hostile to LGBT youth,” she said. “That’s why Lifeworks is so important and the perfect compliment to the Center’s services.”
“We realized that we needed to develop programs that would intervene and protect LGBT youth before they became homeless, working with them and their family,” Lorri added. “So you can imagine when late last year, the Lifeworks board of directors came to us and proposed that Lifeworks become a program of the center, we were thrilled. The sum of our parts is going to be so great. … It’s a real testament to Michael and to the board of directors of Lifeworks that they came to us from a position of strength. Usually, when people approach the center to take over, it’s because they are deeply in debt and they are desperate. Not so in the case of Lifeworks.”
Coming tomorrow: More photos from the Lifeworks Live Out Loud event.
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