Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color deserve to be safe, free and thriving.

But today, trans and gender-expansive communities are facing multiple, interlocking systems of oppression. Across cities and states, trans communities are under attack from anti-trans legislation that aims to direct physical, psychological and spiritual violence in homes, schools, facilities and communities. This includes legislation that specifically targets youth, as well as trans folks who are Black or come from other communities of color.

In 2022 alone, there have been more than 100 bills introduced in state legislatures across the country targeting young trans people. Beyond political targeting and systemic discrimination, too many young people coming into their trans and queer identity find themselves on the streets compared to their cisgender counterparts.

One year ago, Grantmakers for Girls of Color and the Black Trans Fund, incubated at Groundswell Fund, created the Holding a Sister Initiative, the first national fund explicitly dedicated to resourcing and uplifting trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color. We created this necessary space for cis and trans girls of color to build solidarity and community with one another. To date, we have invested $2 million in more than 20 organizations serving, and led by, trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color through this initiative alone.

Our incredible grantees work every day to ensure that trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color have access to gender-affirming care, which includes hormone replacement therapy, mental health support, as well as affirming clothing and spaces, all of which serve as healing tools. They work to ensure trans youth can meet their basic survival needs including help with securing short- and long-term housing, food, and other necessities. Our grantees do the important work to shift and dismantle the systems that continue to perpetuate violence on trans youth of color. They are engaged in work to advance research, respite and healing, activism toward liberation, policy work, and — most importantly — joy, play and power.

This is why the Holding a Sister Initiative was created: to resource places to heal, find joy, and to co-create a world in which trans girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color thrive. Through our work of deep listening and relationship building with our grantee partners, we affirmed two critical and primary needs we need to fulfill to achieve this goal.

First, we need to create and hold dedicated spaces for our trans girls and gender-expansive loved ones to heal from the layers of trauma they have accumulated throughout their lives. Second, trans girls and gender-expansive youth need to feel safe in their own bodies and in all aspects of their lives. They need connection among one another so they can build a community of care, affirm their own humanity, advocate for themselves and their rights, and have access to opportunities for growth and development. They need their own spaces to celebrate their authentic and unapologetic selves.

Trans people deserve to exist as the artists, healers, visionaries, caregivers and builders that they are and have always been. When we look back to history, trans people were held up as divine keepers of deep knowledge that exists beyond masculinity and femininity. In Native culture, two-spirit identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural visions or dreams. In many Native Nations, two-spirit people filled special religious roles as healers, shamans and ceremonial leaders. And in the Hijra community in South Asia, they are considered to be a third gender and have been revered throughout history.

Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color are their own examples of people leading successful, happy, loving lives. They have a depth of knowledge and wisdom that we can all benefit from if only we let them. By centering the leadership of Black trans women and girls, we can secure all of our safety and vitality.

As funders, those of us who support racial and social justice must also resource our trans, femme, and gender-expansive youth of color siblings, niblings and cousins.

Philanthropic organizations and leaders can invest deeply into and partner with existing funds and foundations created by and for trans people, especially those led by and serving Black trans and other trans people of color. They can invest in queer- and trans-led intermediaries and philanthropic serving organizations like the Black Trans Fund, Third Wave Fund, Funders for LGBTQ issues, Fund for Trans Generations, and our own Holding a Sister Initiative. They can take the GUTC pledge and begin the journey to meaningfully increase and track their investments in trans communities, and ensure that trans girls of color are included in those investments. Finally, they can help influence their philanthropic colleagues to follow their example of centering trans communities.

As we commemorate this year’s Trans Week of Awareness and Trans Day of Remembrance, let us memorialize our Black and brown trans femmes and folks. Let us keep creating and expanding space for trans joy, and working toward a world where trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color are robustly invested in — and loved.

This commentary was originally published in TheGrio.

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Black women and girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color deserve abundant investments in supporting our liberated futures. Tragically, philanthropy has always underfunded us.

In 2018, just $15 million out of almost $428 billion in philanthropic giving in the United States reached Black women and girls. That means less than 1 percent goes toward supporting the voices, visions, and experiences necessary for the liberation of Black girls and all people. The lack of funding in the Global South is even more dire: Funding for Black women, girls, and trans people constitutes roughly 5 percent of funding designated for human rights efforts—both in dollars and number of grants.

In the past two years, a growing movement of Black women leaders have been working to transform this inequality. In September 2020, we partnered with a collective of other outstanding Black women leaders to launch the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign. Our goal was to mobilize robust investment in Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth’s leadership, genius, wellness, power, and capacity to thrive. The campaign was launched on the anniversary of the racist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four Black girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley–and wounded another, Sarah Collins.

Black girls and young women must play a central role in discussions about discrimination in education, health care, sexual assault, and policing. Yet, our stories are notably absent from public narratives, policies, and justice movements most crucial to addressing inequality and racial trauma. A bold call for investing $1 billion over 10 years in organizations and movements focused on supporting the liberated futures of Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth shows us the way forward.

The $1 billion goal is not only achievable; it is also an intelligent and essential investment. We established two signature funds—the Black Girl Freedom Fund and the Black Feminist Fund—that have demonstrated how investments in Black girls and gender-expansive people not only remains an urgent need, but produce direct and residual outcomes for others in their homes and neighborhoods. This return on investment makes these funds essential agents for community economic development, and we know that Black women and girls are worthy of investment even without such evidence.

In the two years since we launched those funds, other essential initiatives centering Black women and girls have emerged and/or expanded, including the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium’s Black Girl Dream Fund, the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund, and the Black Women and Girls Fund at the Baltimore Community Foundation. Together, we have invested millions more into the brain trust, innovation, health, safety, education, artistic visions, research, and joy of Black women, girls, and their families.

While we celebrate this milestone and the necessary gains, we must keep this momentum going.

The same energy that led organizations in the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to pledge significant investments—more than $4 billion—toward racial justice efforts in recent years should also drive decisions to invest in Black women, girls, and femmes in this moment. Now is the time to fulfill those unmet commitments. Philanthropic efforts that lack an intersectional analysis, and those that deprioritize funding racial justice efforts at the intersections of our communities’ identities, contribute to the harmful narrative that Black girls and femmes do not require investment. This lack of intersectional analysis will only undermine efforts to grow funds that resource young people whose experiences are often the result of compounded traumas associated with race, gender, sexuality, and age.

Philanthropists who care about racial justice must realize that people who are closest to the problem must be part of the solution. Black women are political, social, and cultural leaders. We are power players shaping our country today despite being grossly underfunded, under-resourced and underestimated. We must keep giving abundantly to this community because we know that all social justice efforts benefit when we place value in Black girls’ and women’s lives and leadership. And we must center Black women-led funds.

Imagine what 2030 will look like if there is a significant investment in the lives and livelihood of Black girls and women’s leadership, innovation, wellness, and advocacy. We will be closer to our vision of collective freedom and liberation.

This commentary was originally published in Philanthropy News Digest.

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