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Jess Wood, Director of Allsorts Youth Project, awarded MBE in New Year's Honours
By James Ledward
Dec 31, 2011 - 10:44:14 AM
Dec 31, 2011 - 10:44:14 AM
Jess Wood, founder and Director of Allsorts LGBT Youth Project based in
Brighton, has been awarded the MBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List
announced today, for services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans young
people.
Allsorts was set up in 1999, when Jess was an artist and she volunteered as a mentor with young people in care.
The young trans lesbian she was supporting had nowhere to go to find friends or get support. So Jess, with James Newton, a youth worker, set up the project at the Young People’s Centre, in Brighton.
The project leapt in size in 2000, when the Diana Memorial Fund gave them a grant of £200,000 to develop services for isolated and vulnerable lesbian and gay young people. It is now one of the largest LGBT youth projects in the country, winning Most Inspiring Youth Project in UK by Creating the Future Awards in 2008 and Stonewall’s Best Community Project in 2009. Allsorts have just won the SE region in the Vinspired national youth volunteering annual awards.
Allsorts runs a weekly drop-in and support groups for trans young people, GBT young men, LBT young women, LGBT under 16s, and A-sorted health and well-being programmes.
Young people from the project lead workshops in schools to combat homophobic, bi and transphobic bullying which still accounts for a quarter of all bullying incidents in our local schools. They also create powerful and colourful LGBT youth resources like posters and books about their experience which are distributed throughout the UK.
Before she set up Allsorts, Jess worked with homeless men taking them food in the early hours before she went to school and worked for Lancaster Samaritans when she was an under-graduate.
At Oxford University, where she was a post-graduate student, she helped set up Lesbian Line and a rape crisis helpline. She was the secretary and a volunteer with Brighton Switchboard in the eighties and was on the founding executive of Spectrum, the LGBT community forum.
Until recently, she taught Judaism to teenagers at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, where she also raised funds and managed their older people’s project.
She was included in the 2011 international list: ‘100 Women: The Unseen Powerful Women Who Change the World’ for her human rights work. She is both the LGBT and one of the young people’s representatives for the Community and Voluntary Sector Forum in Brighton and Hove and an equalities trainer and spokesperson.
She is married to Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah.
Jess said:
"I feel very honoured to receive such an award especially when I think of all the wonderful volunteers and workers in the community and voluntary sector in Brighton and Hove whose incredible achievements also deserve recognition.
"I know I am only one of many people out there fighting for a better and more just society. What pleases me most is that an MBE for any LGBT individual tells us that the state recognises that the LGBT communities matter and need specific services which the state values and honours.
"The letter you receive mentions the Prime Minister and the Queen – I think this shows that LGBT people really are included now in the heart of the British Establishment. Let’s hope one day, the state church finds itself able to follow liberal faith groups in the UK and acknowledge us too?"
Michael Casey, long standing trustee and Treasurer of the charity said:
"Jess is known for her endless hard work, enthusiasm and optimism. She is an inspiration to everyone who works at or with Allsorts.
"Every year she helps dozens of young people to turn their lives around and realise their potential. Many young people come to Allsorts at a very difficult time in their lives – feeling alone, misunderstood and often suicidal. The services Jess has arranged and built up over the years helps them to be happy in themselves and understand their worth.
"Each year at Allsorts, I see young people speak movingly about how the project has changed their lives for the better. None of this would have happened without Jess."
James Ledward, editor of Gscene Magazine, said:
"Jess is a born leader and one of the few we have leading the LGBT community in Brighton and Hove at the moment. She has the ability to listen, digest and deliver sensible, measured advice in a 'professional' but more importantly 'human' manner.
"Allsorts is a credit to her professionalism, her ability to persuade people to engage and most importantly her deep love of young people.
"Her ability to empower young people to take responsibility and hopefully become the community's next generation of 'leaders' is her greatest achievement at Allsorts.
For more information about Allsorts Youth Project view:
www.allsortsyouth.org.uk
|
Allsorts was set up in 1999, when Jess was an artist and she volunteered as a mentor with young people in care.
The young trans lesbian she was supporting had nowhere to go to find friends or get support. So Jess, with James Newton, a youth worker, set up the project at the Young People’s Centre, in Brighton.
The project leapt in size in 2000, when the Diana Memorial Fund gave them a grant of £200,000 to develop services for isolated and vulnerable lesbian and gay young people. It is now one of the largest LGBT youth projects in the country, winning Most Inspiring Youth Project in UK by Creating the Future Awards in 2008 and Stonewall’s Best Community Project in 2009. Allsorts have just won the SE region in the Vinspired national youth volunteering annual awards.
Allsorts runs a weekly drop-in and support groups for trans young people, GBT young men, LBT young women, LGBT under 16s, and A-sorted health and well-being programmes.
Young people from the project lead workshops in schools to combat homophobic, bi and transphobic bullying which still accounts for a quarter of all bullying incidents in our local schools. They also create powerful and colourful LGBT youth resources like posters and books about their experience which are distributed throughout the UK.
Jess Wood
|
At Oxford University, where she was a post-graduate student, she helped set up Lesbian Line and a rape crisis helpline. She was the secretary and a volunteer with Brighton Switchboard in the eighties and was on the founding executive of Spectrum, the LGBT community forum.
Until recently, she taught Judaism to teenagers at Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, where she also raised funds and managed their older people’s project.
She was included in the 2011 international list: ‘100 Women: The Unseen Powerful Women Who Change the World’ for her human rights work. She is both the LGBT and one of the young people’s representatives for the Community and Voluntary Sector Forum in Brighton and Hove and an equalities trainer and spokesperson.
She is married to Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah.
Jess said:
"I feel very honoured to receive such an award especially when I think of all the wonderful volunteers and workers in the community and voluntary sector in Brighton and Hove whose incredible achievements also deserve recognition.
"I know I am only one of many people out there fighting for a better and more just society. What pleases me most is that an MBE for any LGBT individual tells us that the state recognises that the LGBT communities matter and need specific services which the state values and honours.
"The letter you receive mentions the Prime Minister and the Queen – I think this shows that LGBT people really are included now in the heart of the British Establishment. Let’s hope one day, the state church finds itself able to follow liberal faith groups in the UK and acknowledge us too?"
Michael Casey, long standing trustee and Treasurer of the charity said:
"Jess is known for her endless hard work, enthusiasm and optimism. She is an inspiration to everyone who works at or with Allsorts.
"Every year she helps dozens of young people to turn their lives around and realise their potential. Many young people come to Allsorts at a very difficult time in their lives – feeling alone, misunderstood and often suicidal. The services Jess has arranged and built up over the years helps them to be happy in themselves and understand their worth.
"Each year at Allsorts, I see young people speak movingly about how the project has changed their lives for the better. None of this would have happened without Jess."
James Ledward, editor of Gscene Magazine, said:
"Jess is a born leader and one of the few we have leading the LGBT community in Brighton and Hove at the moment. She has the ability to listen, digest and deliver sensible, measured advice in a 'professional' but more importantly 'human' manner.
"Allsorts is a credit to her professionalism, her ability to persuade people to engage and most importantly her deep love of young people.
"Her ability to empower young people to take responsibility and hopefully become the community's next generation of 'leaders' is her greatest achievement at Allsorts.
For more information about Allsorts Youth Project view:
www.allsortsyouth.org.uk
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