As Pride month continues and we celebrate the beautiful differences that are in our neighborhoods, I’m sure you’re wondering, “hey! I have some pretty cool gay people in my life, how can I help as an ally!” To that I say cheers! So for this week, I’m compiling a post on how friends, as well as anyone else, can help your fellow humans in your local Gayborhood!

One of the best ways you can help is getting directly and physically involved! So any volunteering or even donations (monetary, clothes, other household necessities). Now the organizations below will be a mix of Philly based and national so make sure to double check the locations and how you can get involved.

Volunteering & Donating

• Mazzoni Center: With two locations based in the heart of Center City, The Mazzoni Center’s main goal is to provide safe and gender-affirming healthcare to the local community! As an ally you might be wondering, what is gender affirming care? The media tends to portray it as gender reassignment but in reality, it’s more than that! Gender affirming care can include, but not limited Primary healthcare, HIV care, hormone therapy, family planning, and GYN services. So the main difference? They don’t discriminate! You would think in 2025 we don’t do that anymore, but I fear we do. So if you want to get involved, click the link provided above. (Donations & Volunteering)
• Attic Youth: As it says in the title, this organization is focused on LGBTQ+ youth who continue to suffer from discrimination and feel as though they might not have a space to be themselves. Attic Youth’s goal is to provide services and consueling for LGBTQ+ youth with hope for their future. (Donations & Volunteering)
• Colours Organization: With using holistic healing, providing resources and services, as well as… Colours Organization focuses on helping intersectional members of the LGBTQ+ community, those who not only deal with sexual orientation discrimination but as well as racial. (Donations)
• Covenant House: One of the toughest forms of discrimination that LGBTQ+ youth face is homelessness. If they’re outed to family members, sometimes they end up getting kicked out onto the street. So Covenant’s goal is to help protect those who are young and still have so much potential! To help them build a life to look forward to with the resources provided such as housing, education, and mental health support. (Donations & Volunteering)

If there is a specific organization that you are interested in, i.e. Asian American focused organization, check out this bigger list here!

Get Involved Politically

This is one of the scary ones, but also another impactful way to help you local queer community!

• 5 Calls is a organization that helps you reach all you states representatives by providing their direct phone numbers as well as give you a script. 5 Calls tracks all different types of legislation that are currently moving through the government, as well as provide updates about their progression.
• Follow non-profit organizations that you agree with or maybe need extra support groups from! I’m subscribed to FEMINIST and Women’s March who hold bi weekly meetings throughout the year and teach you about upcoming protests or introduce to other non-profit organizations that may have different missions than them. During these meetings you also get to hear from different experts and organization leaders and why they joined their respected teams.
• Protest. This was is an easy given, usually if a protest has a title you’ll be able to look it up and find a page with all the information about where protests are taking place and what the purpose is. But you can also hear about any protest from the previous bullet point!
• Stay Informed. There’s a couple ways to do this whether fact checking the information you see online or by following pages that keep track of legislation. 5 Calls with how much they track can be a little overwhelming so I’ll specifically link an anti-trans legislation tracker. But you might be able to find similar websites, or keep up with organizations newsletters!

Promote Queer Entrepreneurs

A great way to get yourself away from Amazon, Target, or any other big box brand is by finding local sellers! You can do this through applications such as Etsy, Shop, and or even a local farmers market. Usually they’ll label whether or not they are queer sellers but nonetheless, it’s still just as kind to help a local creator queer or not. Honestly spending the extra few bucks is worth it! You might also find something cheaper than you would have compared to Amazon! But most importantly, you’re actually giving back to hard working people who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into such beautiful crafts.

Be a space for them

I’m like this for all of my friends, I always offer hot food, a warm blanket and fresh water. Life is hard, even if my friends just need a night to forget the outside world and actually get some rest, I always open my door for them. Especially from billionaires and politicians who would rather see more dollar signs than see their people alive and healthy. Now you don’t have to do as much as I do, I just have a deep need to protect my friends, but by providing them some sort of space to be comfortable with you whether thats venting or just offering a shoulder to sleep on, it’s so important for us humans to interact and protect one another.

Thank you so much for reading! Have a wonderful day!