SLM at P r i d e !

This year Silver Lining Mentoring took part in the Boston Pride Parade for the first time. It was an opportunity for SLM young people, mentors, staff, family and friends to celebrate our own personal identities and organizational values within Boston’s larger, thriving LGBTQ+ community. We are proud to have young people vanguard SLM’s position in celebrating diversity and inclusion across all our identities and to help make up a group of more than 20 people who marched this year.

While taking part in Boston Pride was new for SLM, the organization has long known the importance of celebrating and supporting young people who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ population. For more than five years, SLM has had an initiative to find mentors within the LGBTQ+ community in order to respond to the fact that there is an over-representation of young people in foster care who identify as gender and sexual minorities.
Read more about why we marched in Pride here.
Far From the Day-to-Day, Boston Leaders Reflect, Connect
Pictured above: Class of 2017 Barr Fellows at the Nyamirambo Women’s Center.

Colby Swettberg: “The learning journey was an opportunity for each of us to show up and dig deep into what matters most in our leadership, in our communities, and in cultures that extend across the globe. We couldn’t keep ourselves from making connections back to our organizations and openly sharing challenges and solutions in the service of supporting one another. It would have taken many years to create the bonds that grew organically from our learning journey – I’m confident that we’ll rely on one another in myriad ways personally and professionally in the years to come as a result of having shared this experience.”

Read more about the experiences of the Class of 2017 Barr Fellows here.