Poor bitchezzzzz
[h=1]Shuttered LGBTQ community centers feel shutdown fallout: 'It's been really hard'[/h]
[FONT="]Alyx Irving, 18, first started spending time at Affirmations, an LGBTQ community center in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, Mich., three years ago, when his gay older brother brought him along. It soon became his second home.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I’m usually there all the time,” Irving tells Yahoo Life. “It’s a joke between everyone that I actually live there.” It was at the community center and through its support groups that the teen, who identifies as genderqueer, found the acceptance he does not have at home.
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[FONT="]But the center closed in March, just like hundreds of others across the country, as part of the coronavirus pandemic. And now, says Irving, a deep loneliness has set in.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s been really hard on me,” he says. “My mental health has kind of been depleting and I don’t have a lot of contact info for the other youth because we hadn’t gotten that close yet. So, it’s been pretty depressing.”
LGBTQ community centers made a plea to be included in future stimulus packages as they provide “critical services such as medical care, mental health counseling, virtual support groups, filling prescriptions, providing hot meals and check-in phone calls for older adults, serving as shelters for homeless youth, distributing non-perishable food items and hygiene products, case management, HIV testing, and hosting virtual engagement activities to decrease social isolation
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[h=1]Shuttered LGBTQ community centers feel shutdown fallout: 'It's been really hard'[/h]
[FONT="]Alyx Irving, 18, first started spending time at Affirmations, an LGBTQ community center in the Detroit suburb of Ferndale, Mich., three years ago, when his gay older brother brought him along. It soon became his second home.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“I’m usually there all the time,” Irving tells Yahoo Life. “It’s a joke between everyone that I actually live there.” It was at the community center and through its support groups that the teen, who identifies as genderqueer, found the acceptance he does not have at home.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]But the center closed in March, just like hundreds of others across the country, as part of the coronavirus pandemic. And now, says Irving, a deep loneliness has set in.[/FONT]
[FONT="]“It’s been really hard on me,” he says. “My mental health has kind of been depleting and I don’t have a lot of contact info for the other youth because we hadn’t gotten that close yet. So, it’s been pretty depressing.”
LGBTQ community centers made a plea to be included in future stimulus packages as they provide “critical services such as medical care, mental health counseling, virtual support groups, filling prescriptions, providing hot meals and check-in phone calls for older adults, serving as shelters for homeless youth, distributing non-perishable food items and hygiene products, case management, HIV testing, and hosting virtual engagement activities to decrease social isolation
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