Amazing!

I was at the True Colors conference at the University of Connecticut in Storrs for the last three days and the conference is truly amazing. Many of you have attended conference, but none are like the True Colors conference. What was the largest conference that you attended? 100, 200, 300? Well the True Colors conference had 2500 attendees!

Malloy addresses gay youth conference at UConn
Associated Press
March 11, 2011

STORRS, Conn.
About 2,500 people, including 1,900 youth, are gathering at the University of Connecticut for what's being billed as the largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth conference in the country.

Can you imagine that many people at one conference? As part of my internship, I helped plan it and I was there Thursday helping in setting up and on Friday and Saturday I ran the vendor area where we has 35 vendor tables.

The conference had over 240 workshops and hundreds of presenters. Most of the workshops are on Friday when most of the 1,900 students attend with their advisors so there is a mixure of workshops for high school and college students, and for professional attendees like school counselors, therapist and social works. You can look at the Conference Workshop Program Guide here.

I was able to sneak away to attend a workshop for professionals on Saturday, “Supporting Caregivers of Gender Variant or Transgender Children”. The workshop was given by a licensed clinical psychologist and was attended by social workers; one of the social workers had a child just come out as trans and was there to learn what to expect when the client transitions. The psychologist also had a couple of parents there who’s child transitioned and when one of the parents was talking about her trans-daughter attending kindergarten and how the school system helped her, she mentioned the town where they live and it was my town! I talked to her after the workshop ended and it turns out that they live only a few blocks from me. It’s a Small World After All.