- We are at the front line of it all.
And that sometimes is really scary,
but who else gonna do it.
- Most trans women of color live in survival mode.
So they're worried about providing a place to sleep.
They're worried about eating,
they're worried about keeping themselves clean or up.
- And COVID made all of that so much worse.
Some girls' income went from barely making it to nothing.
Then transportation issues, with public transportation,
either shutting down or not happening.
So the girls were stuck in a place
that may be unsafe for them.
And so we needed to make sure that they knew
that they could reach out to us, that they knew
that there was some financial assistance,
and they knew someone somewhere loved them.
Sometimes a board member will buy bracelets
so that every girl who gets it has a bracelet.
It says, "She believed she could, so she did."
It was us delivering it to them.
It took six to eight of us on the board
to hand deliver all those bags every two weeks,
and did it with a smile, and we laugh, and we joke.
So it was more than just a couple of bags
to help them sustain; it was love.
- It's the followup, it's the care, it's the phone call,
it's the making sure that they're on the list.
- There have been several trans women
shot at in the last couple of weeks in Detroit.
There are girls calling us and saying,
"I've just been shot at, at a hotel, what should I do?"
And we have to figure out what we're doing,
and it literally is two, three in the morning.
- It differs from woman to woman
because no woman is the same, no need is the same,
no issue or concern is the same.
That care has to be personalized and designed
per situation, per woman.
There was a real tumultuous time where,
I did not speak to my mom for almost three years.
I realized that I have to be the person
for people that I wanted.
- I lost touch with my parents relatively young,
and we're in a better place now,
but I was not really welcome in my family
when I transitioned at 17.
Jeynce's relationship with me was one of the things
that kept me through that time.
And even after that, like there were,
I went through addiction, I went through all kinds of stuff
where I lost everything, and I mean everything.
But I was able to figure it out because she was there.
She was there without ever being asked to.
And so for me, like her relationship saved my life.
- We represent strength, we represent resilience,
we represent love, we represent pain,
we represent hurdles and barriers,
but we also represent a tenacity.