Newbie

Posted by: "ahdbiz" ahdbiz@yahoo.com ahdbiz
Sun May 17, 2009 9:21 am (PDT)


Hi everybody! I'm new to the group and would like to introduce myself.
My name is Amy and I work with a pro bono international lawyer who has a non-profit group called SOS Dignity (www.sosdignity. org).
The purpose of the group is to help transgender people with the various difficulties they face, from general discrimination to specific hate crimes, lack of or problems with educational and work situations, health and legal issues, etc. At the moment the group is focused on helping the transvestite community in São Paulo, Brazil, in particular the sex-workers, but the idea is to make this an international group to advocate for all transgender people.

We are starting up a blog quite soon, but how soon this happens depends on our finding people who have stories to tell so that we can post them in the blog. Our feeling is that if a few people put up their stories, then others will be encouraged to do so as well, and this will help spread the word about SOS Dignity and perhaps get us some needed funding so that we can go ahead with our work and expand it.

These stories can be any length, and can of course be anonymous if the writers wish. If you or someone you know or knew has been the victim of a hate crime, or if you have encountered prejudice on the job or in an educational environment, or had problems with the legal or health systems, etc., we'd like to hear about it. Just tell your story in a natural way and e-mail it to me privately. I thank you in advance for this!

These stories will be kept confidential until they are posted on the blog. I will be collecting them in a file until we have a few to get the blog started. I will keep in touch with every writer and be sure to let you know when your blog entry has been posted, and give you the URL to the blog.

If you have any questions, please post them here or e-mail me privately.

Also, please check out www.sosdignity.org -- thanks!

Much love to you all,
Amy
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil