Supporting Our Youth (SOY) is an exciting, dynamic community development program designed to improve the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgendered youth in Toronto through the active involvement of youth and adult communities. We work to create healthy arts, culture and recreational spaces for young people; to provide supportive housing and employment opportunities; and to increase youth access to adult mentoring and support.

As a community development project that engages LGBT youth in strengthening their capacity to improve their own lives, SOY recognizes the intrinsic value of the arts as a tool for positive social and personal development. The annual success of SOY’s photography and writing workshops, for example, as well as our youth arts festival each year at Pride, prove that through artistic processes, young people who are all too often relegated to the margins of society are able to explore and expand their reality and engage with the world in ways that are creative, innovative and exciting. Moreover, they are an outward expression of the dynamism and positive forces at play in the lives of LGBT youth.

The arts in Toronto bring people together in remarkable ways. We build community through art by strengthening our relationships to our own story, to ourselves and those around us. In a city vibrant with difference, art celebrates who we are and provides a forum for real-life connection.