(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Jacqui Tricarico, Senior Correspondent for "One-on-One."

And joining us now is Elizabeth Schedl, who is the Executive Director of Hudson Pride Center, serving the LGBTQ+ community in Hudson County, New Jersey.

Elizabeth, so great to have you with us.

- Thank you so much.

I'm excited to be here.

- Well, first, can you describe for us what the Hudson Pride Center is?

- Yeah, so Hudson Pride is the largest LGBTQ+ community center for the state of New Jersey.

We have two locations, one in Jersey City and one in Union City.

And we offer social services, referrals for medical and primary care services, housing, food support, mental health services, you name it, we pretty much offer it for our community.

We're open five days a week.

We serve as a drop-in center, so anyone can kind of stop by, check out our services, kind of even just grab some food, hang out, maybe work on homework or look for a job.

We're always here for the community.

- So many programs that you offer.

Something that I feel like is always on parents' mind, I'm a parent, I know you're a parent as well, is our children's mental health.

And I know that's especially important for the LGBTQ+ youth within our community.

So tell me a little bit about this YouthConnect Program and what you all are doing there.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And I will say now, more than ever, really mental health services and programs for our youth and young adults is extremely important, so we're very proud of the services we provide for our youth and in that capacity as well.

YouthConnect has been around for over 15 years.

We offer services for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults living in Hudson County.

If somebody doesn't live in Hudson County, we still offer the services.

We can do it virtual, or if they are able to get to us in person, then we'd offer those same services.

Every Friday night we have a free workshop for our youth and young adults.

It starts at 6:00 PM and it goes till 8:00 PM.

During that workshop, we offer free dinner.

Some of those workshops really differ, right?

So like one week you might be doing an artistic paint night, or another week you might be crafting, another time you might be talking about your coming-out stories, it really ranges.

And we definitely wanna provide a sense of support and community where other LGBTQ+ youth can find friends and community and in a safe space.

On top of that, if you enroll into our youth program, outside of that, you could get a number of different services, one of which is free mental health services by affirming and safe mental health providers, which is extremely important.

And we try to take away the barriers such as finding that provider if you don't have insurance, or don't wanna go through your parents' insurance, or if you don't have the money to cover co-payments.

So we offer it completely free for our youth and young adults.

- That's incredible, 'cause we know how hard it is.

Even with so much talk in the press and everywhere that we hear about the struggles of youth mental health, the services are still really tricky to find, so it's so important.

How have you seen that program- Give us an example of how you've really seen that program directly impact some of the young people you see come through your doors.

- Yeah, definitely, I think a lot of the youth, about 35% to 40% of all the clients we serve identify as youth or young adults.

A lot of them are dealing with issues with family or friends' acceptance, lack of awareness and support by the people in their surrounding communities of their identity or their sexuality.

So really when they come to us, they're looking for that type of connection.

And a lot of them might be struggling with substance abuse, suicidal ideations, low self-esteem, different things that youth in general might be going through, but also can be exasperated when you don't have family support or you have a government that is very anti-LGBTQ or anti-the-gender-diverse community.

So what we often do is pair them with a provider that they would prefer to work with that specializes in something they might be going through, and then they really are able to work through those issues and kind of find that guidance that they're looking for to move through those things that are happening.

And what we really see is youth feeling happier, more engaged, and want to experience life in a different way.

- You touched on this a little bit, but community involvement is so crucial to helping us with our nonprofits, with our organizations, and moving things forward.

Talk about how you're working with the community, especially with hospitals and schools, to continue the work that you're doing.

- Yeah, so with the schools, it's really exciting for us.

We have a partnership with Partners in Prevention under the NJ4S state grant.

And what that allows us to do is to go into schools throughout Hudson County with our education specialists and kind of do workshops for not only the youth, but also the staff.

So really helping to provide a special level of education to staff so they can better support the youth that are in their classrooms.

And then, also to the youth, helping them, you know, with conversations around sexuality, gender identity, and also just having a safe and affirming space.

A lot of our youth come into our YouthConnect Program through those workshops that we're doing in schools throughout the county.

So that's a really, really great program that we have.

The second piece is the hospitals, and clinics, and other medical primary care private providers.

So we do a lot of work throughout Hudson County and beyond with those medical practices, because there's a really important level of education or training that we want them to have when they're seeing clients that identify as part of our community, right?

You wanna make sure that their intakes help identify the gender-diverse community, right?

So like that's the first thing you see when you go into a doctor's office is this form you have to fill out.

If you aren't properly able to identify yourself on there, you may feel like, "This isn't the place for me, I'm not gonna feel comfortable disclosing or talking about a lot of different things."

So that is a really important factor for us.

The other piece to that, when working with these hospitals and medical providers, is making sure we have a really good connection with their team.

When my staff call one of them up and say, "Hey, I have a referral for you, I have a client that needs X, Y, or Z services," we wanna make that really easy, and so we can help facilitate establishing the appointment, making sure everything runs smoothly.

Because a lot of times just even getting that appointment and the lag time and, you know, all of us, right, going to the doctor, it might be a month out, that lag time is a barrier in itself.

So we try to eliminate all of that as much as we can.

- We're taping this in May, it's gonna air in June, which is Pride Month, which is so important, it brings attention to so many issues that you're raising.

But, lastly, why do we need to make sure just outside of June, too, and all the other months in the year, that we're making sure to support our neighbors that are part of the LGBTQ+ community?

- Yeah, I appreciate that question.

I think Pride Month is so important, right?

It's not just celebration, but it's an awareness, it's a protest.

It's all of the things that we continue to do to fight for our community, and our rights, and our lives, right?

Especially when so much of it is on the line with a stroke of a pen at this point.

And so I think, for me, what I would like to say is that, you know, please don't just show up and become an ally or support us during this one month.

We live every single day and all the months throughout the year.

And we've right now, above any other time, we really need your help, and your support, and kind of the acknowledgement of our existence, and our rights.

- Well, it's so important, and we'll continue to air this even after June.

(chuckles) So thank you so much, Elizabeth, for joining us.

We really appreciate it.

- Yeah, and thank you for the time.

Anytime that we can talk about LGBTQ+ rights, issues, and Hudson Pride Center, I would be happy to come on.

So thank you so much for having me.

- Thank you, we'll definitely have you back.

Stay with us, we'll be right back after this.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

Citizens Philanthropic Foundation.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

United Airlines.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Congress Hall.

A Cape Resorts property.

And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by BestofNJ.com.

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