 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded Indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. I recently attended the Baked With Love Pride Celebration in Barrie, and as I was walking around and looking at the nonprofits who were there asking for support and sharing the programs that they had, there was one with which I didn't think I was familiar, and it was Elevate Youth, and they had a large bulletin board with services for queer youth. So joining us today is one of the directors at Elevate Youth to talk about who they are and the services they have to provide. So please welcome Jesse to a first interview with All Things LGBTQ. Welcome Jesse. Thank you for having me. And thank you for so much for making time to do this interview because I know that Elevate Youth, the same as the other nonprofits and service organizations in Central Vermont, are dealing with the after effects of flooding. So let's first talk about you. How do you happen to be in Vermont, your connection with Vermont? And how did you happen to become involved with Elevate Youth? OK, where do I start? It's a long story. We have time. So let's see. I am from Connecticut originally. I've lived in Vermont since I went to Northern Vermont University in 2011. So I guess over 10 years now, I've been around. I think that to be quite honest with you, how I ended up in Vermont is maybe how a lot of other queer or trans people end up here, which is we are going through trauma as children and we want to escape our families or we want to try something new and we go as far as our car will take them. So that's how I ended up here. And I came home and I love it so much. OK, so what did you major in at Northern University? So I was a little bit all over the place. I started out as an art major. I was doing photography and painting. And I ended up double majoring at the end of the four years. So I did a major in in art as well as a bachelor in sociology and anthropology. I just began taking like sociology classes because I thought it was really fun. I really enjoyed learning about different communities and the workings of the brain, why people do certain things. And I said, oh, I have enough credits to make this a major. So in my last year in school, I had to do an internship, a kind of like a social justice or social services internship as part of that major. And so I decided to reach out to the Clarina Howard Nichols Center, which is the local domestic and sexual violence center in Morrisville, Vermont. And they took me on as an intern, so I was running the crisis hotline and being an advocate at at the court for survivors of violence. And so that's really where my social work career began was with that internship. Right. So how did you happen to come to elevate youth? So that's also a long story. I, you know, through my career before I went back to school, I had worked with youth in varying capacities. So I worked with youth in foster care primarily at residential programs and homeless shelters around the state. One of the jobs that I landed on and was at for a few years was the youth development coordinator position with the youth development program. And that was, I mean, that's I can tell you a little bit more about that later, if you'd like, but our program is a statewide initiative that works with youth 14 to 23 who are either in foster care, currently working with DCF or they've aged out. And so I was providing supplemental case management to those youth, getting them involved in advocacy and leadership opportunities to try to make changes within the system, along with like working with different community partners to support youth and their goals around anything that they want. So housing, employment, normalcy, things. And so I did that job for two years before going back to school to get my master's in social work. And when I finished school, I got hired as the director of that program that I used to case manage. And the youth development program is one of the statewide initiatives that administered is administered by elevate services. So that is how I ended up at elevate. OK, so tell me a little bit about elevate youth. What what is the focus for the organization? How long has it been around? And if I understood correctly, some people might have known elevate youth by a different name. Yes. So elevate youth previously known as the Washington County Youth Service Bureau is the only nonprofit in Washington County that's focused solely on the unique needs of adolescents and young adults, so they have direct services, including the country roads counseling program for youth, as well as administering different statewide coalition programs. Like I mentioned, one of them is the youth development program that I direct. I believe so. The name change was initiated a couple of years ago. I've been at this position for a year, so it was a little bit before my time. But I believe that the idea was for the name to more accurately reflect the services that we're offering to youth and to the community. I think the previous name was a little bit convoluted. People were potentially confused. It was really long. So we kind of like listen to feedback from the community. And I believe the name elevate was decided upon because it better reflects what we're doing in our statewide initiatives and in Washington County in general. So the decision to use to term elevate was a deliberate effort to show that youth were the focus of the services you were providing. You weren't an extension of the Department of Children or Families or anything else. It's what are the needs of youth and how do we best support you in meeting those needs? Yeah, exactly. OK, so let's talk a little bit about, you know, if if I was a youth, why would I come to you for services? And what could I expect to receive for services? Do you mind if I talk about my program specifically? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, go ahead. So the youth development program is a statewide initiative that works with 12 district sites, one of them being Washington County with youth ages 14 to 23 who have been in foster care or who have aged out. So the idea with the youth development program is that someone who's in foster care can start building that therapeutic relationship with a case manager who's not connected to DCF early on in their care. So maybe 14, somewhere from like 14 to 17 before they age out at 18 and lose all of their supports. So whether it's like their natural supports that they're losing or it's, you know, their DCF worker or their other. There's a lot of like community agencies that only serve youth up to 18 and we don't have anything in place for young people in that transitional age of like 18 to 23, 25, like, you know, when they're just gaining independence, like they're gaining the skills to be able to find housing on their own, job skills, gaining employment, as well as being normal people, like something that we recognize about youth with lived experience in foster care is that they miss out on a lot of normative experiences in addition to maybe the trauma that they're enduring from their experiences. They have less opportunity to go to prom, to like go on fun trips with their friends. Some of that is due to funding. Some of it's due to like lack of opportunity to connect with their community. So all of those things are what we aim to do at the youth development program to use the term like elevate again is to elevate and empower youth to think about what their goals might be. Maybe they've never had anybody to kind of have those conversations with before. So if you were going back to your question, a youth, you know, who's eligible between that age range in the program, you could expect to have a partnership with a case manager to, you know, empower you to think about what you're really looking for to kind of create the life that you really want. And it has to be a major adjustment in and of itself just to age out of the foster care program where all of a sudden here you have all of these services wrapped around you. And then overnight it's like, OK, you're on your own now. Thank you very much. And here's your bag lunch carry on. So you will help people in that transition to identify resources and to clearly establish a life direction. Yes. And we prioritize youth 17, 18 in that age range and above, especially while they're still in custody. We try to do team meetings as often as possible or what we call the 17 year old transition plan meeting so that when the youth still has those wrap around services, the YDP case manager is pulled in to make sure that there there's a plan moving forward for when the youth ages out and loses all of their supports. OK, so how would I access your services? If if I'm put into foster care, is there an automatic referral or does someone have to refer a youth or can the youth reach out to you on their own? There's a couple of ways. We do work very closely with the Department for Children and Families and at 14 DCF workers are able to refer. And so that's kind of part of their role is to make sure that people who are eligible are getting referred to us. Youth can also self refer. They can actually that's pretty common for for folks above the age of 18. So, you know, we kind of rely on the department to refer minors. But oftentimes what happens is that when a youth ages out at 18, they need a break. And this is something that's super common, is that they want to be their own guardian, they need some space from DCF. And they know that their YDP worker will always be there no matter what. Like this is a voluntary program that's youth driven. So youth don't have to participate in this. And that is a big part of its success. Because youth are finding their own reasons to like access that support. It's not something that's mandated. And when someone is in care, a lot of things are mandated. And youth don't often have a lot of autonomy to make their own choices. So if someone who's over 18 chooses to reach back out to their youth development coordinator or. You know, contacts us on our through our website, which is how they might find those services. It means that there will be a successful relationship or partnership moving forward, because it's something that they want for themselves. So if I'm a youth who's 18 and I've aged out of the foster care program. Do I all of a sudden, if I want to continue services with elevate youth, am I going to have to find a funding source to support that? Or is that something that's built into the elevate youth as an organization? I think I know what you mean by funding source, but if I'm incorrect, just let me you can stop me. So. We are. Partially grant funded at the youth development program and something that's really unique about our case management program that might differ from. Variations in other states, because other states do have independent living programs for youth who have aged out of care, but they're not the same as the development program. We have what's called youth investment grants for supporting youth goals, which is flexible funding that can be used for anything that I described earlier. So anything that the youth determines is their goals, whether it be, you know, we most commonly see goals related to housing, employment, basic needs items. So like if a youth is in the process of signing up for three squares benefits or they're receiving WIC, but it's just not enough money to help get them by, you know, if they need groceries, parenting supplies, stuff like that, they will with their youth development coordinator. Fill out a youth investment grant form. All of those statewide come to me and then I disseminate. What money goes where, you know, help helping while I oversee the budget. So that's how we support youth financially, which is also a big draw to the program. But I as the youth, we serve receiving services and not the person who is responsible for paying you. Oh, yeah. No, they're free services. Yeah. So that that's OK. I wanted to circle around and if there was a youth who was watching, they would know that, oh, no, no, no, I don't have to come with check in hand. Oh, yes. So at Baked with Love, there was this incredible outreach for our queer youth. Is that something that is a new initiative? Or were you there just to let our youth know that, you know, we're here for you, we have services to offer you. We've always had services to offer you. Please, if you need our help, ask us. Yeah, I think a little bit of both. So we don't have. Really, any services specific to marginalized communities at Elevate. We don't have any LGBTQ specific groups or anything like that that I know of. However, we are very aware that the amount of youth in those communities that we are serving is very high. So we like organization wide are trying to revamp our efforts to make sure that we are letting youth know this is a safe place and that these services are extended to everybody, especially like two folks that might be afraid or might be unsure. Because I mean, personally, I believe that if we're not promoting that, like if we're not having a booth at the local prides and stuff like that, we're we're being quiet about it. And that's not being helpful. That's kind of taking the side of the oppressor is my opinion. So I prefer to be like loud and proud about that and represent our organization in that way. I and I'm going to fully support that. So as we end our time with each other, is there anything about Elevate youth that I didn't ask you about that you think is important for people to know? Other that than you've been here, you're still here and you will continue to be here for our communities. I think that, you know, I don't know if I don't know exactly how to give you a short answer to that, which seems to be the theme for me in this interview. But I think that it's just so important that we are rethinking and constantly thinking about how we can do better for marginalized communities. Like I know for Elevate specifically in like 2020 during the increase in the Black Lives Matter movement, our organization created an equity book club. And that was part of our, you know, one of the things that we did organization wide to kind of like be the change and to really, you know, be supporting efforts as a social service agency and as a nonprofit to the best of our ability. And I think many organizations kind of like fizzled out after a couple of years. So we still have our, you know, we're carving space for those book club meetings to do like education for our staff and to like keep those conversations going. But we can always be doing better. Like at the youth development program, we have a partnership with outright Vermont. So we have ongoing like virtual and in-person trainings for our case managers. We also just applied for a twenty four thousand dollar grant through the government. This grant was for organizations that support youth who work with marginalized communities to promote resilience. And our proposal included how we would use that funding for to kind of like extend upon the youth investment grant program, which I talked about earlier. So we would use that funding specifically for LGBTQ plus and BIPOC youth to support normalcy for them, whether it be like going to BIPOC specific hair salons or purchasing gender affirming clothing for queer and trans youth or, you know, gas cards so that youth can access their community and their family and that they can have that support that they might otherwise not be able to get or that other folks might get, but youth who are in foster care aren't afforded. So I guess, yes, the last thing I'd say about elevate is that we recognize that this is a problem and we recognize the specific needs of marginalized populations. All right, with that, thank you for spending this time with us. And I look forward to inviting you back when you have a special project that you would like to promote. Oh, awesome. Thanks, Keith. Hi, our audience out there and all things LGBTQ. Thanks for joining us today. We're welcoming Cara and Armstrong and hello. How are you? I'm doing very well, Linda. Good, good. And I'm just going to give our audience a little taste of who you are for those who don't know. Cara Armstrong is the author and illustrator of three books, a trick of living, sketches and poems, the tri-lingual counting with cats who dream and moxie, the dashhound of falling water. Cara is also the co-author of Frank Lloyd Wright in Panorama and an A guide to Cleveland's sacred landmarks. Originally from Kent, Ohio, she is now a Montpelierite and is director of the School of Architecture and Art at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. She belongs to she longs to live in a world filled with books that come bundled with the choice of extra chocolate, gin, martinis or cheese. Yeah, I think those are the three main options. Or you could also say D all of that. So what brought you to lovely Vermont from Ohio? Oh, well, it was a circuitous route. So I moved to Vermont actually from southwest Pennsylvania, where I was a curator at Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, which is a World Heritage Site. And while I was there, we had high school programs and college programs in the summer that were a week. And one of the gentlemen that taught the high school residency program was Aaron Temkin. And he at that time was, well, he became dean of architecture at Norwich University, and he was looking for a visiting professor for a semester. So I came for a semester in fall of 2011. And since then, I like to say I've been loitering with an intent. I've never left. That's great. Well, welcome to Vermont. Thank you so much. So how do you juggle all your architecture, your art, your writing? I suppose they're kind of linked in a way. If you're an illustrator, it probably doesn't hurt to be an architect and have an idea about what things and look like and how they're built. But it does seem a little off, so not off, but, you know, like different kinds of career goals and. Well, yeah, and I can say I'm a little off, too, in some ways. But I think I'm like you in some ways. Linda, I have a curious mind and putting things together is my way of kind of understanding the world and looking at the world and understanding my place in it. So I think making things, whether they be big buildings or poems or drawings, are ways of me trying to understand the world. And a lot of my illustrations and designs and poems have to do with kind of my everyday life and just looking at the world. And trying to understand it in some way. And the first time I saw you read your wonderful poetry was Friday night when there was a benefit in the Mount Pilia for different organizations. And that was very that was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And it felt nice that poetry could be helping the community. I don't think that's the first thing people turn to in a crisis. Most people, I mean, some of us, I think, oh, there's a crisis. I'm going to read a poem. I do find comfort in reading poems that I know. But I don't think that's the natural instinct of a lot of people. But I do take a lot of comfort from poetry, both both reading it and writing it and listening to it, like events that Robin Joyce, a great rabbit, more poetry series. Yeah, you know, she's been very inventive and getting a lot of of that movement going. Yes. So how often do you write? Do you come as an inspiration to you? Or do you sit down at certain hours or a combination? I usually try to write. Well, I try to. If I think about it too much, I get overwhelmed by it. So I have really easy goals. I try to write for five minutes a day. I try to read for five minutes a day and I try to draw for five minutes a day. And usually if you start one of those, you you end up doing one of them for a lot longer than five minutes. And I still take poetry workshops and classes sometimes. I haven't really found a poetry writing group yet. So by taking the classes, I'm still in a community of writers and readers. And I find that having some kind of accountability like that is sometimes helpful. Yeah. Have you thought of starting your own maybe writing group or yeah. And I have taught a few poetry classes. And actually, I've been talking to the T.W. Wood Gallery about doing some classes there that are actually a combination of art and poetry, because I do think there's a certain synergy between them. So maybe I will get some of those classes or they will get some of those classes up and running soon. And you can find me there being accountable to my community. That's a great space. It is a great space like that space. So. Do you find that you have more time in the summer? Because I know my partner, Ann, is a was a teacher. She's now retired. There's there's so much grading and, you know, student work. And there's a yeah, there's a lot of grading and student work and a lot of administration since I'm the director. So I do have to juggle that. But I think it's especially when school is in a session, when those five minutes become really important, that I need that kind of mental break during the day just to refresh myself a little. But yeah, in the summer, I do have a lot more time. So I do have more projects, personal projects in the summer, I said. And I do I do a lot of reading in the summer, too. So when you were a little carer, did you think, oh, I'm going to be a writer? I'm going to be an architect or a cowgirl or, you know, what? When did you and, you know, were you always interested in writing? I have always been interested in writing. And I like to say I was tainted at birth, but in some ways I was gifted at birth. My dad was an architecture professor and my mom was an early childhood education. So my mom was always reading things to me and my dad was often drawing or making things with me. And since I grew up in a college town, I got exposed to a lot of lectures and visual arts and other people being creative. And I grew up in Kent, Ohio, and they had this great program called Kent State for Kids in the summer that I used to go to, where I was introduced to a lot of different things. Are you old enough to remember the shooting there? Sadly, I am. That's my my first memory. I was very little. I was actually in the crib. But what I remember is the sound of helicopters constantly for four or five days. And my sister was a little bit older. So she remembers she was in the backyard in our sandbox and the National Guard came up our backyard with bayonets. I had a cousin who was I think in second grade and she was stranded at her elementary school and just getting back home. And one of my father's students was shocked, which was, I don't know, it's just shocking. It's just shocking. And I mean, he was in the architecture program and a lot of the shootings happened in the parking lot. I think all of the shootings happened in the parking lot of the architecture program. Yeah, very sad. Yeah, I was a young adult. I thought it was 18 or 19. I think that happened in an old hippie. So. Well, I respect you. So. When did you write your first poem? How old were you when you wrote your first poem? Oh, probably, you know, like in kindergarten or something. And I think I think we froze in here for a second. I think we're phrasing a little here. So I'm going to I'm going to stop the recording and start over where we left off. OK, because you froze for about a minute. That's unfortunate. So you have a lot of varying degrees, I notice. You have an MFA, a degree in architecture. And let's see what what are your other. I have a degree in environmental design and I have a degree a bachelor's of philosophy in interdisciplinary studies, which basically sets you up to be good at cocktail parties because you can talk about a variety of topics. I thought that's what you're at. OK, so would you like to read us a few of your poems and give our audience a taste of. Who you are and what you're working on? Sure, I'll start with one of the ones that I read at the fundraiser for the flood. And I think it grew out. It was actually during the pandemic. So I'll put a plug in for my book that came out during the pandemic called Trick of Living, and this is one of my sketches on the cover. And in some ways, a trick of living is like a phenology journal, which is different than a phenology journal. But it's really a way to record changes of the seasons around you. And I noticed during the pandemic, like a lot of people, I was at home more. So I was spent time in nature and writing down what you noticed. I mean, you can sit in your house in non-pilure and notice nature around you. So I think part of my writing comes out of just looking around, especially thinking about the changing sheet of the seasons and the weather. So the first one I'll read is called Our Bones, Our Water. Our bones are water. The water rose, filling up rooms, houses, drowniness and dreams. We drifted down streets, pushed by currents and caught up in eddies. Our bones are water. The river runs from our wrists and whispers words into our unclassed hands. Very nice. Thank you. And you have another who might read this. Yeah, I think part of writing Trick of Living was also thinking about the animals that I encounter on a daily basis. And of course, the cats that I live with, the dog that I lived with at the time. And I think in my poetry reading, I think about how we have our own animal selves and animal encounters. So I think about people like Lucille Clifton and her foxes, Edwardo Coral, who I think is at VCA and sometimes Jerry Stern and Mace Wentzen and Meryl Wachizer with her roach. And so this poem is about animal encounters that actually started with our composting bin at I live in a condo development. So it started with a composting bin at our condo that unfortunately, or fortunately, since they were doing their job, gotten tested with maggots. So since that time, we have started spraying our compost with a little bit of ammonia, which cuts down in maggots and bears. So there's a bonus. But this one is called Saint Maggot Saint Maggot. Careful, surgeon, no hands to steady. You strip off the rot of heroes, excise, chronic ulcers and purify our flesh. Intuitive detective arriving to a murder scene. You determine time of death, help pinpoint the perp, allow justice to be served. Earth's conscientious custodian, you deal with our dung, clean up the carry-on, return our dust to dust. Marital worker, we impale you on sharpened hooks, cast you into still and unsteal waters and you give us and you give us not loaves, but fishes. You lay down your lives for hours. There is no greater love than this. With my lips, I glorify you. With my heart, I share your marvels with the four winds. We watch you in your ascension as you are given wings of being blessed by God. And you return to us again. Thank you very much. It was very nice. Thank you. So who are your influences growing up or did they change over time? Oh, they change a lot over time. I mean, I think as I read different things at different times in my life, they kind of come in and come out. I think poets that write about the body and inhabiting the body and inhabiting the body influenced me a lot and experienced the world through the body, whether by seeing or touching or hearing something. Lately, the last poetry workshop I did was led by Joan Larkin, who I worked with when I got my MFA in poetry, too. And one of the things that I'm interested in as an architect and a designer is how people enter a building and navigate through the building and leave the building. And I think I take that interest into my poetry, too. In my poetry reading, I'm always thinking about how the reader enters the poem, kind of how the poet leads us through the poem and then how we exit the poem. So some first lines of poems that Joan Larkin encouraged me to look at is kind of how we enter the poem. I just wrote some some ones, some down that I thought were pretty interesting that kind of get me into the poem right away. So Eduardo Corral from Cordoba in his book, Guillotine in a bathroom with turquoise walls or from Yusuf Komenyaka's Black Figs because they tasted so damn good. I swore or even Fanny House. I mean, she's living her everyday life. And her first line is neon clothes hangers brighten the laundry mat. And even going back like the classic Sir Walter Raleigh in The Pilgrimage gives me a scallop shell of quiet. I mean, those are kind of lines that take me in right away. So I am really interested by people that start their poems. How people start their poems. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. And it is really pulls you into the poem immediately, which is always good. So how was your summer going? And do you have any last words? Oh, and where can people get your book or book? Oh, here's my plug. You can get a trick of living from Amazon.com. And I will donate any proceeds to the flood relief. So Amazon.com for all proceeds will be donated to flood relief. I'll work with Robin on that. Great, thank you. And my my summer's been great. It's not the summer that I planned. It will be really plans for living in natural disaster. But I mean, I feel very lucky and very grateful as I was not really affected by the floods as badly as some people were. But I feel very lucky to live in a community like Central Vermont where we're all trying to help each other. And I think it's a community that celebrates poetry and ideas of poetry and and helping each other kind of, you know, all walk home. And, you know, there seems to be a poetic tradition in Vermont. I mean, so many poets have been here. So many are here now. That's true. It's just like a haven. It's like a place for poets to come and live. Amazing. Well, we have a lot of good MFA programs in Vermont that then keeps poetry alive and gathering people here for for poetry. I mean, I think of Goddard and Bennington and VCFA and the great poets that they have helped bring into the state. Yeah. So let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. And thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. And our audience will get a chance to meet you and buy your book and hang out. So it's a pleasure. And I look forward to seeing you at future community poetry reading. Miss Linda. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.