LGBT Needs Assessment to hold bilingual presentation in Pilsen

The LGBT Community Fund, a program of The Chicago Community Trust, will hold a bilingual discussion forum and presentation of the 2011 Chicago LGBT Community Needs Assessment at the National Museum of Mexican Art Oct. 2.

The presentation will detail results of the assessment in both English and Spanish for the first time.

Findings from the assessment were first announced June 27 at Howard Brown Health Center. Bringing a Spanish-language discussion to Pilsen at the museum venue, 1852 W. 19th St., is in direct response to race and geographic barriers to support and services discovered in the research, according to Jessica Kadish, project coordinator at the Morten Group, which partnered with CCT to conduct the assessment.

“One issue that was reported repeatedly across data collection vehicles was the lack of LGBT resources and information on the South and West sides. Another issue that came up in some of the focus groups and surveys was the lack of available community resources and information in Spanish,” she said. “During the research period, we were committed to making sure that community members from all over Chicago — not just the North Side ‘gayborhoods’ — had the opportunity to represent themselves in the needs assessment.”

Morten Group is committed to making the results available to people throughout the city, she added.

Among the barriers found during the assessment, the Morten Group also found that tension exists among members of the local LGBT population over the use of the term “LGBT community.”

“We know at the end of the day the LGBT community is not monolithic,” Morten said in June. “[The term community] is used for convenience.”

Other major findings, based on survey and focus group responses from 2,000 participants, found issues when it came to access to health care, employment and benefits. When survey respondents were asked to identify the top LGBT community issues they think need to be assessed, 66 percent chose access to healthcare. Forty-three percent chose access to government benefits (for example, marriage equality), 33 percent chose employment, 25 percent said community safety and 21-24 percent said discrimination based on class, race or age.

The full report can be downloaded here.