The SOUL Project: Building Partnerships to Support Black LGBTQ+ Communities

The Service, Outreach, Unity, and Liberation (SOUL) Project aims to establish sustainable, community-centered partnerships between NYU and local Black LGBTQ+ organizations in New York City. Guided by principles of collaboration, trust, and shared leadership, the project focuses on relationship-building and community care while exploring opportunities for future partnerships grounded in mutual vision.

Prospective collaborators include local organizations focused on serving Black LGBTQ+ communities such as The Okra Project, a Black trans-led mutual aid collective dedicated to supporting Black transgender and gender-diverse communities through food justice, healing-centered care, and mutual aid. The project seeks to engage community organizations in conversations around wellness, advocacy, and access to culturally responsive resources.

The SOUL Project aims to establish the foundation for equitable, mutually beneficial partnerships between the university and local LGBTQ+ organizations. For Dr. Lockett and the Belonging, Advocacy, Liberation, and Love (BALL) Research Collective, the project supports goals of cultivating sustainable, community-centered partnerships that honor the knowledge, leadership, and expertise of Black LGBTQ+ communities. For prospective community partners, the project creates opportunities to strengthen local connections, amplify ongoing initiatives, and explore future collaborations grounded in shared values and goals. Importantly, the SOUL Project prioritizes understanding, alignment, and relationship-building rather than data extraction, ensuring that any future research or evaluation emerges through shared vision and values.

PI: Dr. Gabriel Lockett, Assistant Professor, Applied Psychology, Steinhardt

Bridging Islands: Storymaking and Literacy Program Partnerships Between Mayâ Learning Space and the Georgiou Library

Mayâ Learning Space (MLS), located in Santa Fe, Bantayan Island, Cebu, Philippines, is a learning space that celebrates the identities and creativities of Bantayan’s islahanon (islander) community. As a library, workshop space, and community center, MLS is dedicated to preserving and honoring Bantayanon language and practices; fostering collaborative educational activities between islahanon children and adults; and building young islahanons’ capacities for self-discovery, independence, care for self and others, and sense of futurity. MLS welcomes children and adults to learn together through its curated book collection, free play, and creative activities.

A partnership with MLS will inform and expand the current work of the Georgiou Library, which is housed in the Department of Teaching and Learning. This pursuit will be a bridging of islands, connecting a learning space in Bantayan with a children’s library in Manhattan. The project will build on MLS’s current initiatives, particularly workshops and programs that encourage participants to create stories, poems, and songs that center Bantayanon language and culture. It will highlight how children and young people of minoritized ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines make sense of and remake stories told in English and Filipino; it will also examine children’s and young people’s authorship as a decolonial practice.

PI: Dr. Lara Saguisag, Associate Professor, Teaching and Learning, Steinhardt