2010 Rainbow Grantees

1. 20th Anniversary Free Screenings – Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film and Video Festival

In celebration of the 20th Anniversary, Inside Out will present a series of free screenings, each presenting films and targeting audience members from under-represented communities within the broader LGBT Community. The series will feature screenings aimed specifically to: LGBT Families; LGBT Seniors; Trans and Intersex Communities.

2. Manitoba Music - The Manitoba Music Collective/Video Cabaret International

The project is culled from a distinctly queer experience, led by experienced queer artists and the narrative is told through the central character Darryl - a queer musician who finds himself running away to an isolated community on the Canadian Prairies.

3. Man 2 Man - Kwame Stephens

Man 2 Man is a theatrical production that will explore a love story between two black men. When Emmanuel met Damien, he was just starting to explore his sexuality, after leaving a marriage to a woman. Damien on the other hand was younger and more confident in who he was as a gay man. This story takes us on their journey from meeting to making a commitment to each other. It deals with the obstacles and issues they had to face on this bumpy road to love.

4. Durham Pride Prom 2010 - Eastview Boys and Girls Club

The end-of-year celebration and graduation party for LGBTTIQQI youth in Durham Region. Youth, volunteers and community partners will be meaningfully involved in this process.

5. INTENTION: The Zine Making Project - Gallery 44 Centre of Contemporary Photography

A new Gallery 44 initiative in which youth will create a zine based on the theme, Intention, using the photographs produced during the OUTREACH program as a point of departure. Through Zine Making and contemporary photography workshops, youth will create a zine collectively with the objective of enhancing skills in team building, developing technical and conceptual approaches to photography and publishing, as well as encouraging acceptance and difference.

6. Taking up Space Poster Project - Phase 2 - SKETCH Working Arts for Street Involved and Homeless Youth

A vibrant poster produced by LGBT street-involved youth will be printed through Eva's Printshop social enterprise for youth. The youth artist creators will introduce the poster and its message at 5 different location in Toronto (group homes, shelters or drop-ins), by means of an LGBT and homelessness sensitivity workshop.

7. Reel Pride - Centre for Spanish Speaking People

Utilize independent and Latino Films as an educational tools that will open opportunities for dialogue regarding sensitive issues within the Latino LGBTQ and PHA community. From critical discussions, the films will also be utilized as an advocacy tool, creating a social network while increasing awareness of issues faced by the Latino LGBTQ and PHA community

8. Trans Art Project - Asian Community AIDS Services (ACAS)

A photo/video documentary film that will portrait and showcase the lives of Asian Transgender women in an artistic way. The photo/video documentary will be used as an educational tool for the public and the East and Southeast Asian communities in the GTA.

9. Music and Participation Research Initiative (MAPRI) - Counterpoint Community Orchestra

The project will research the variety of school music programs, identify the curriculum taught in our Toronto Education system and promote Counterpoint Community Orchestra (CCO)

10. Queer South Asian Youth (QSAY) - Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP)

QSAY is dedicated to fostering and continuing the anti-homophobia dialogue between South Asian parents and their queer children, between queer youth and their peers and between queer youth themselves that began with Brown Like Me.

11. OUTwords - Margaret Frazer House

3 day-long Spoken Word workshops including a performance to be delivered by Margaret Frazer House in partnership with Zena Lord and Junia Mason. The workshops and performance will integrate movement, music/rhythm, voice and drama into the format. The participants in this project will be LGBTTQQI2S people living with mental illness and will foster and honour creativity in them.

12. Check it Out: The LGBQ Women's Health Workshop Series - Planned Parenthood Toronto

"Check it Out: The LGBQ Women's Health Workshop Series" will educate and empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and other women who have sex with women (WSW) so that they can make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive health care.

13. The Phoenix Project: Supporting and Empowering LBT Women Experiencing Intimate Relationship Abuse (IRA) - My Sister's Voice

The Phoenix Project provides a monthly support group as well as individual counselling sessions for LBT women experiencing Intimate Relationship Abuse (IRA). The occurrence of IRA is as frequent in same-sex relationships as it is in heterosexual relationships, occurring at a rate of 30%.

14. Leading Leaders - Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line

A series of training sessions for the Youth Line Board of Directors: the Leading Leaders Project will help strengthen the skills foundation of the current Directors, so that they can sustain the direction and growth of the organization.

15. Trans Partner Network - Trans Partner Network

TPN is currently the only Toronto-based peer-run network for partners of gender variant and/or partners of trans-identified men and women. TPN will offer the community a series of workshops, one-on-one support, social activities, information sessions, a list-serve and an interactive website.

16. The Gay Men and Partners and Lesbians and Partners Cancer Support Group - Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation

Wellspring is offering support to our Gay Men and Partners and Lesbians and Partners Cancer Support Groups.

17. Rainbow Pioneers - Halton Organization for Pride & Education (HOPE)

LGBTTIQQAA mature adults and seniors in Halton need an opportunity to gather, find and offer support to each other. By organizing regular meetings and events, our mature adults and seniors will have the opportunity to network and find support.

18. Handy Trans 2 - Sherbourne Health Centre - Supporting Our Youth

Handy Trans 2 offers workshops by and for SOY's Trans Fusion Crew group (TFC). The goal is to facilitate the learning and sharing of skills among trans-identified youth, with a view to improving their standard of living and reducing barriers to self-sufficiency.

19. Dosti and Snehithan - Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention

A weekend retreat, online support, provide culturally reflective safe spaces and community building for GBTQQ South Asian and Tamil-speaking men. The combined Dosti and Snehithan Group wishes to provide some of the stepping stones required to create and maintain these spaces.

20. Black Families and Friends (BFF) Online - Black Families and Friends

The creation of an online BFF website, which will act as a face for the network and link LGBT Black youth, and their families, to ethno-specific educational materials, peer support networks, and provide online referrals to supportive community agencies and providers.

21. The Proud Parents Project: Trans People Speak About Parenting - LGBTQ Parenting Network, Sherbourne Health Centre

The project aims to identify and influence the policies which produce social inequities for trans families in the areas of: family courts and medication; schools and childcare; health and mental health services; and child protection services.

22. Treatment Ambassador Program - Latinos Positivos

The Latino Peer Treatment Ambassador Program will educate a HIV-positive Latino community members on HIV treatment issues relevant to the Latino community.

23. Among Friends - Access Alliance Multicultural Health and Community Services

"We are Among Friends" will be a booklet that will focus on getting the voices of LGBTQ newcomers heard in Toronto as they discuss personal stories, challenges, successes, and identify resources and everyday realities.

24. Building Alliance in LGBTTIQQ2S Communities: Bridging the Gap between Deaf and Hearing People - Ontario Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf

To unite Deaf and Hearing LGBTTIQQ2S people by breaking down barriers and providing interpreters, and a symposium that will discuss how to improve accessibility for the Deaf Queer community to obtain services provided by many different larger, dominantly Hearing organizations.

25. YAAHA! - Growing up and Out - Youth Advocating Anti-Homophobia Awareness (YAAHA!)

YAAHA! Group has grown exponentially in the past 2 years. Time for evaluating our capacity to deliver programming for queer/trans youth as well as to conduct a needs assessment into the strengths and challenges faced in Scarborough.

26. Not Your Grandma's Valentine: Queer Friendly Cards for Kids - Shira Spector

Creation of additional art work to expand on a series of queer-positive valentine cards for kids and teens with the aim to develop them into a book intended for publication. The original valentines were born in response to the dearth of imagery and materials available for LGBT families and youth.

27. "HOME" - Paul Hasick

"HOME" is a ten minute drama that will focus on the themes of family, love, and memory. Matt, a young gay man, is visiting his gay grandfather in a nursing home. This film will concentrate on the life and the experiences of and elderly gay man who represents a segment of the gay and lesbian population that is underrepresented and often forgotten.

28. Greasy Spooning: A Literary Reading Series - On behalf of The Greasy Spooning Collective

A Literary Reading Series is a project motivated to host a reading series to features emerging and established LGBTTIQQ2S writers. Also to create a stronger community of queer and trans writers, as well as facilitate a supportive space in which to sustain, share and create queer and trans cultures.

29. 2nd Annual Hard & Able: celebrating queer disability - James Cairns

A one-night only cabaret celebrating artist that identify as both queer and disabled. A minority within a minority, this marginalized group often has difficulty finding performance opportunities that are a) accessible and b) that recognized disabled individuals as performance artists.

30. Trailing Arbutus - Hope Thompson

A short film set in the pre-AIDS year of 1975 in Toronto and is about love, murder, and repression. It uses this particular time in Toronto's queer history - a time where Toronto's Victorian attitudes collided with the liberation of the 1970's - as a backdrop for a bittersweet love story about repressed desire.

31. Prickless Wonder - Evan Kelemen

This novel is about how two female to male transsexuals become their own 'family', thereby supporting each other through the daily struggles of being Trans. My novel offers insight into FTM realities and strives to portray us in a multi-layered, complex and truthful manner.

32. Chezuva Cultural Education Project - Hesper Phillip-Chamberlain

Moyo Wa Africa to facilitate a series of workshops and sharing to reconnect LGBT youth and adults of African descent to the rich spirituality and traditions of Africa. We hope to begin the process of decolonization which we feel is at the root of many of the issues facing the Afro Diasporic communities.

33. ShOUT! Queer West Youth and Young Adult Program - Gay West Community Network Incorporated

An innovative series of live monthly events that aim to stimulate a needed community dialogue on a wide range of pertinent topics to LGBTTIQQ2 youth and their friends and allies (ages 18 -27) residing in West-Central Toronto.

34. "The Sugarcane" ("El Canaveral") - Samuel Lopez

A short documentary film portrays Joaquin Ramirez. Fearing for his life, HIV+ and a Salvadorian political activist, seeks asylum in Canada but the outcome of his refugee claim looks bleak. He is given a reprieve on the deportation and a judicial review. Six months later he receives a letter in the mail summoning him to a meeting with an immigration lawyer he's not sure he'll get a positive answer.

35. A Survival Guide to Pregnancy for Butch Women and Transmen - J. Wallace

As a transman navigating the world of planning a pregnancy and fertility clinics, there are no resources, on guide and nothing to help you other than informal community connections. This is intended to be a resource to help support and guide transmen and butch women through pregnancy and birth with their identities intact.