NCS Pride Month 2024

In honor of Pride Month, June was filled with exciting community gatherings and fun celebrations for NCS clients.

Early in the month, NCS Options hosted a table at the Montefiore Medical Center’s Pride Event.

Their table included so many valuable resources ranging from Chance for Change referrals, vocational and educational training, to ally guiding behaviors and the intersection of our programs with the LGBTQ+ community.

Options also organized their own Pride festivities at Louis Nine House later in the month!

Options hosted an ice cream & crafting event to celebrate Pride Month. They had an educational discussion about the Stonewall Riots, the history of pride in NYC, and ways all people can continue to show their support and allyship. Clients created colorful drawings and enjoyed ice cream with rainbow sprinkles to get in the spirit.

We are so grateful to have such wonderful staff who organized these welcoming and celebratory events for NCS clients.

While we look forward as this Pride Month comes to an end, we also find it important to take moments to remember the trailblazing advocates who helped us reach this point of acceptance in modern history. We honor Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera for their leadership in the LGBTQ movement and their work to provide their community with safe housing.

Marsha and Sylvia created STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) House, the first shelter for LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming homeless youth in the country. At points homeless themselves, Sylvia and Marsha were leaders in the LGBTQ movement and advocates for those who face discrimination because of their gender identity, expression, and sexual orientation, especially those that were excluded from the Gay Rights Movement because they were gender-nonconforming, poor, homeless, and/or BIPOC.