Home Again

Our June takeover continues with a beautiful piece from @Tiarafab exploring the concept of "home" as a Black trans woman also navigating immigration. See attached for her piece and below for a bio to get to know her better.

Tiara Gendi is a Human Rights defender and Trans Activist with bi-continetal experience in the fields of human rights and trans diverse community building in Africa (Zimbabwe) and here in the USA. She serves as a Steering Committee member for the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP) envisioning the emancipation of all black people through creation of safe spaces and community for Black LGBTQIA+ Immigrant communities, deportation defence, Health care access and freeing those caged in Immigration Detention Centers.

Tiara’s background covers volunteering as a data capturer at GALZ (Zimbabwe), documenting the services attained by organisational and community members, coordinating and mobilizing the Transgender and Intersex group within the organisation. She is also a former housing monitor for SMYAL, Supporting & Mentoring LGBTQ+ Youth and formerly served as a Health Impact Specialist with the Department Of Health in Washington DC - creating and implementing measures to increase uptake and access of healthcare services within the LGBTQ+ communities in the DMV

Tiara also did voluntary work with T.R.E.A.T (Transgender, Research, Education, Advocacy and Training) as a baseline survey assistant, documenting the experiences of trans diverse individuals in accessing sexual reproductive health and rights, human rights violations from the community and the law enforcement authorities, family relations and also personal well-being of this key affected population in eight towns within Zimbabwe.

Having been a peer educator, buddie group member, peer grant reviewer and also an LGBTQ+ youth leader, Tiara is also a 2016 Mandela Washington Fellow who has worked on Trans Equality as an International and Immigration Fellow in the US with Trans United and a Youth Fellow at SMYAL. Currently working towards building Stronger and Visible communities for Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project (BLMP) , When not doing community organizing and advocacy work, Tiara is an artist who can be found doing creative writing and/or onstage performing Poetry, monologues to theatre.

HOME AGAIN by Tiara

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