OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising

OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising is dedicated to supporting and empowering the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning community at UC Berkeley.

OutLet Peer Advisors acknowledge that there are many questions that a person faces when dealing with changes in sexual orientation or gender identity. We are here to provide a much needed resource to those students that feel isolated.

OutLet is an online resource that the UC Berkeley community accesses in order to find valuable and safe local LGBTQ resources, and to begin discussing their personal concerns about sexual orientation and gender identity with another person. For many students this may be the first opportunity that they have had to reach out to someone who will listen with respect and empathy resulting from real personal experience with the LGBTQ community.

We strive to meet the needs of our changing community, and to respect and support those who feel isolated and alone.

Project mission:

- To provide a much needed online resource to UC Berkeley students.
- To connect struggling and isolated students to informed and knowledgeable peers.
- To empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students.
- To help make UC Berkeley a safer, more welcoming space for LGBTQ students.
- To spread information and valuable safe resources to those students who may benefit from them.

Potential impact:

This online space is dedicated to any person who has a question, issue, or conflict that they would like to discuss in an anonymous, confidential environment. One such issue that fueled the development of this space is the fear and isolation felt by students questioning their sexual orientations and gender identities.

OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising hopes to become a valuable resource to the entire UC Berkeley community, and hopefully the entire UC community.

Required resources:

1. Total project needs: $10,000
2. Other:

   Since OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising is entirely web-based, the reach of our program is directly determined by our funding. Everything that we hope to accomplish is dependent upon our ability to present ourselves online. Given that we are a multidisciplinary student group, we have a limited technological foundation to pull from, and thus must turn to web development firms and contracted programmers.

   Any contribution made to our group will be directly used to pay our web development team to bring life to our ideas online through our website. Although technology is not cheap, OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising will not sacrifice the security measures necessary to protect the anonymity and confidentiality that we promise to our users. We will not launch a mediocre website that could potentially cause more harm than good given the sensitive nature of our mission. Any funding provided to us will be used to ensure the highest level of security for our users, and the best web space possible.

Additional info:

OutLet LGBTQ Online Peer Advising is run and operated entirely by students and is limited in its scope solely as a result of its narrow funding.