Youth Organizing and Leadership
By convening and connecting young people from all over the state, the Alliance creates both physical and digital spaces for students to inform, participate in, and lead the Illinois LGBTQ+ safer schools movement.
From Youth Leadership Summits to Day of (No) Silence activities, to leading the movement for gender and racial justice through school-and community-based Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSA) clubs, young people are working together to create spaces that support, affirm, and celebrate LGBTQ+ youth and their allies in Illinois schools and communities.
For more information or to explore how you or young people in your life can join the movement, please contact Julio Flores.
Youth Advisory Board
The Alliance’s youth leadership model is based on a nationally -recognized model known as the “5 Cs” – Confidence, Contribution, Connection, Character, and Competence. This model focuses on the strengths young people bring to spaces they occupy rather than viewing them as problems to be fixed and ensures all work is youth-led. The Alliance’s Youth Advisory Board (YAB) is the foremost body overseeing the Alliance’s youth organizing work. Their mission is to educate youth on the issues that affect them so that they can become leaders, take action, and make long-term changes.
Applications for the Youth Advisory Board go live in early September. Applicants have the opportunity to interview with current members to share why they want to be part of the YAB and how this opportunity will improve their leadership skills.
Youth Leadership Summit: January
The Alliance hosts a Youth Leadership Summit each January focusing on support and technical assistance for Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs), including GSA Day for Racial Justice organizing strategies, and Day of (No) Silence preparation. The Summits are opportunities for youth leaders and GSA advisors/sponsors to come together from across Illinois to organize, network, learn, and develop leadership skills within the movement for safer schools for LGBTQ+ identities. Registration for our summit opens at the beginning of December each year. 
Day of (No) Silence
Day of Silence is a national student-led demonstration in April where LGBTQ+ students and allies all around the country—and the world— protest the harmful effects of harassment and discrimination of LGBTQ+ people in schools. In 2024, the Alliance followed GLSEN’s direction of shifting to Day of (No) Silence to rise up and take action against the 800+ anti-LGBTQ+ legislation proposed that year.
Learn more about The Alliance’s Day of (No) Silence activities here.
Our largest annual youth leadership convening, Action Camp is a 5-day sleepaway camp in August that brings together leaders from GSAs across the state to learn from one another and shape the safer schools movement. Planned in partnership with Youth Services’ Pride Youth Program since 2018, Action Camp is often described as “magical” because youth can see their identities reflected back at them, sharpen their critical lens, strengthen their anti-oppressive frameworks, and actively skill-share and practice what it means to create spaces in the world where all identities are safe, supported, affirmed, and celebrated. Action Camp is open to GSA leaders who are rising 8th graders through rising Seniors in high school. Applications are open each April and are now closed.
Action Camp 2024 took place from July 29 through August 2, 2024.
Gender & Sexualities Alliance (GSA)
#GSA Days: Led by our national friends and partners at GSA Network, #GSADay4GenderJustice and #GSADay4RacialJustice, in November and February respectively, are days of action for GSA groups all across the country to mobilize towards greater justice for all and celebrate the multiple identities we hold. GSAs are encouraged to host and organize teach-ins, teach-outs, rallies, marches, celebrations, and other actions to raise awareness in their school and home communities. 
IL GSA Network: Genders & Sexualities Alliances are some of the first spaces LGBTQ+ youth find support, acceptance, and, in many cases, an entry to activism in shifting the climate and culture of their school and home communities. And because this work is always more fun when in community with others, at the Alliance we try to connect GSAs to other groups who are nearby. We can’t help make these connections if you’re not signed up for the National Registry! So go register today!
If you are a GSA advisor/sponsor or an adult ally in other LGBTQ youth spaces such as a community center and would like to subscribe to the Alliance’s email list to learn about events and resources, please contact Jay Diaz.
To stay up-to-date on all Youth Organizing information, please follow The Alliance and the Illinois GSA Network on Instagram.
