Eon Youth Project

Wingspan is Southern Arizona's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community center. The organization provides social services, advocacy, and community-building programs that reflect its mission: to promote the freedom, equality, safety, and well-being of LGBT people in Southern Arizona. Wingspan's Eon Youth Project is a comprehensive program that serves and supports vulnerable LGBT at-risk youth. Eon's programs include a homeless youth program, a drop-in lounge, youth leadership development efforts, a youth activism program, and other services for the program's target population. Wingspan aims to: 1) provide a safe and welcome space for LGBT and other at-risk youth; 2) provide a drop-in lounge (center) for at-risk youth that is substance free, safe, warm, and an accepting environment as an alternative to bars and parks; 3) provide youth trainings to increase awareness of and connection to community resources by supplying information and referrals to behavioral health, sexual health, job, and housing services; 4) educate youth to increase their knowledge and skills to de-escalate crisis situations; and 5) provide youth access to educational and support activities that increase coping skills and decrease cycle of crisis (coming out, homelessness, sexual health, violence, academic, and employment). The performance measures include: the number of unduplicated and duplicated youth that access youth lounge; a completed retrospective youth survey (self-report) of awareness of community resources, social connectedness, social networks; the number of youth signing in for HIV/STI testing and the number of youth who access crisis services and referrals. NCA/NCF