The LOFT: LGBT Community Services Center, White Plains, NY
This is my second year of receiving an ASIP grant—for two ostensibly separate internships in differing fields. However, the common thread between these two jobs (a research assistant’s position and an intern position at an LGBTQ community center) is worth noting for several reasons. Firstly, although my 2018 internship and my 2019 internship were in academia and social services respectively, they both boiled down to finding effective ways to make people’s lives better through social interaction. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they both furthered my goal of narrowing down a possible career path by showing me what I wanted to give and get during a typical workday. I am fairly certain that I want to go to school to become a psychotherapist after I graduate from Williams, and I have my internship at The LOFT: LGBT Community Center in particular to thank for that.
Getting the position at The LOFT was a stroke of good luck from the very beginning. After my mom told me about their organizational ethos and the fact that they were accepting interns, she whisked me away from Williams in the middle of the week to attend my interview. The center was a few towns over from my neighborhood, in the basement of a Korean Methodist Church. Flying over its front door was a massive LGBTQ flag, an immediate indication that I’d made an excellent choice of employer. When I officially got the internship, I was surprised to find out just how seriously they took that flag—essentially everyone who worked and attended The LOFT was part of the LGBTQ community in some way, and the range of people that attended The LOFT’s services and programs was as diverse as the city itself. Elderly people, young people, black and white people. People of all different genders and sexual orientations came together in the narrow hallways and air-conditioned meeting spaces of our center, and for once it didn’t feel like being queer made me (or anyone else) the odd-one-out. This was, from the very moment I started there, one of the most important experiences I got out of my summer. Growing up, even in a supportive and accepting environment (that is becoming increasingly—even aggressively!—friendly towards LGBTQ issues), it’s easy to feel isolated from one’s peers due to being the only “gay friend” in the group. Not so at The LOFT, where being queer was basically expected when you walked through the door in the morning.
I began working at The LOFT in late May, earlier than I had anticipated because of the impending month-long celebration of Pride, which would manifest as a smorgasbord of events and gatherings occurring throughout the county. My first tasks at the center were focused on preparing their online and printed publications for the massive influx of things to do that members of The LOFT would find interesting or important during Pride month. Writing blog posts, creating blurbs for the newsletter, and updating The LOFT’s behemoth of a calendar were all on the menu for my first few weeks at the center. While that might seem routine or even boring, it wasn’t long before I began travelling to the events and representing The LOFT out in the community. Over the course of Pride month, I tabled at health centers, a music festival, town and village Pride parades, a rock-climbing Pride event, and Westchester’s first ever Pride street fair in White Plains. I did so alongside an ever-changing cast of LOFT affiliates, including the familiar faces of the center’s permanent staff, and the incredible showing of LOFT volunteer members who were as eager as I was to get out into the world and spread awareness of the unique issues the LGBTQ community faces; also important was the joy and individuality that comes naturally alongside queer identity.
Pride month is important in that it confirms the validity and beauty inherent to my own gay identity, but it reaches even further than that. The amount of both young people and old people who attend these events, in addition to the diversity of identity, race, socioeconomic status, and opinions of celebrants, really showed me the extent to which Pride made people feel comfortable being themselves. I feel like it’s very easy to “accept” or “tolerate” a class of people in society while still allowing them to feel adrift and isolated; but seeing the pure and unadulterated joy that folks expressed over the course of June really made it clear how intentional and important every facet of the month is, even if it may seem strange to others.
As Pride month faded into July, my work at the center changed dramatically as I became a facilitator for the LGBTQ POC (People of Color) discussion group. I have led discussion groups in various capacities throughout the years, but this one was perhaps the closest I ever got to participating in a therapeutic relationship with other people, and what really drove home for me both my parting thoughts about The LOFT, and my thoughts about what I want to do with my life. The sessions I lead for the POC group were extremely unique in that a completely different set of people would attend each one, which led to a wide variety of emotional tones and topics of conversation. I lead the group with two (later three) other peer facilitators, all with their own style and strengths, and the discussions ranged for joyful stories of success in the dating world, to haunting descriptions of employer anti-LGBTQ discrimination and emotional abuse in the workplace. Some people cried, others laughed, and everyone listed and contributed throughout. The point of facilitating the group was not so much to give advice or encourage specific courses of action, but rather to listen thoughtfully and encourage the speaker and group to connect with their own feelings and plans for moving forward with whatever issue was presented.
I finished at The LOFT in late July with a feeling that I had genuinely done good work and figured out more about what I want out of a career. It felt like a spiritual continuation of the work I started last year, and a culmination of many years of wondering how I could put my strengths to good use for myself and the community. I’m incredibly grateful for the financial support and guidance I received from the Alumni Sponsored Internship Program. I hope to continue this work at Williams and afterwards, because my internship at The LOFT has shown me that the community needs more places like it, and that I have a real ability to do good in this line of work. Thank you!
Megamenu Social