Washington University junior Luka Cai is establishing a helpline at PrideCenter to serve the LGBTQIA* community in St. Louis.

Using funding from the Gephardt Institute’s Civic Scholars Program, Cai partnered with PrideCenter, an offshoot of Pride St. Louis that serves as a community support space for LGBTQIA* individuals, to develop the project. The helpline is currently pending approval by the PrideCenter board.

The helpline will serve as a peer counseling, short-term resource for the St. Louis LGBTQIA* community.

Cai said that the idea for their project came from their own personal experiences and the importance for members of the LGBTQIA* population to have support systems and access to resources.

“I experienced growing up in Singapore to be a very homophobic and transphobic experience. I always wanted an LGBTQIA* role model, a non-judgmental supportive person I could talk to. That really gave me the idea that social and emotional support are important for people who are going through things that are difficult to talk about,” Cai said. “When I came to Wash. U., I experienced a really positive, affirming environment and I always wanted to do something to give back to the local LGBTQIA* community in St. Louis.”

According to Cai, the Metro Trans Umbrella Group as well as Trans Education Services have been two of the main supporters for the helpline.

“We’ve also reached out to and tried to establish connections with other local community partners for two reasons. One is we’d like to invite them for training and to talk about their resources in order to establish a stronger relationship between volunteers and these community partners,” Cai said. “I think the second reason is that it makes it easier for the helpline to make referrals to these resources when we have a strong relationship with them and we better understand their services and policies.”

The helpline will accept applications for volunteers until April 19. Volunteers will be required to attend 50 hours of training over 10 weeks from May 27-Aug. 11. The helpline will provide volunteers with free meals and metro passes.

“I believe that the people who have the resources, time and energy to volunteer in a community are the ones who are the most privileged, so I want to offset some of the costs of volunteering by offering free meals and metro passes,” Cai said.

According to Executive Director of Trans Education Services Jaime Hileman, the training will be “rigorous” and include cultural competency, terminology and crisis training.

“A part of it will be cultural competency training, so everyone who’ll be volunteering will have some idea about general circumstances and barriers, issues [and] trans experiences, because not everyone volunteering will be trans and even folk who are may not have a better understanding of other trans people’s lived experiences,” Hileman said. “The training will involve terminology so everyone’s using terms in the same way that will make any associated reporting or recording more efficient and … then will hopefully provide for better experiences for a person calling in crisis as well as for the operators themselves.”

Brown School of Social Work student Riott Kochman said that the training is equivalent to a “three-credit college course.”

“The Brown School literally offers one LGBTQIA*-specific course, so we’re talking about maybe 40 hours of coursework if even that over the semester,” Kochman said. “That’s really just scratching the surface. And the training is 50 hours of that by the most trained and competent people in the area that I know and don’t know for free, and you’re getting bus passes and fed; yeah people should do it.”

After training, volunteers will be expected to work a weekly three-and-a-half hour shift at the helpline for at least one year from Aug. 2019-Aug. 2020. The helpline will operate from Wednesday to Friday, noon to 7:00 p.m.

“I’m hoping that the helpline will be up and running in the third week of August,” Cai said. “That would give our volunteers a one week break between training and starting to take shifts. We also plan to hold a helpline launch party the week before the helpline goes online.”

Cai said that they think the biggest challenge faced by the helpline will be sustainability.

“Financially, the Civic Scholars grant is a one-off grant, so we’re still looking for other grants and other sources of funding to keep the project going,” Cai said. “I think the most important thing about a resource like a helpline is that it needs to be reliable. And in order to be a reliable resource, community folks need to know that it’s going to be here and that it’s going to stay. So I think sustainability is especially important.”

Cai plans to show the helpline is a needed and beneficial resource in the community by tracking calls.

“We are working on an evaluation plan that keeps track of how many calls we get once the helpline is up and running, as well as how effective these calls are and in what ways we can improve training and improve our volunteers’ levels of experience and expertise,” Cai said.

To ensure sustainability through volunteer recruitment and retention, Cai said that they’re looking into providing incentives, such as internship credit, for volunteers.

“For the Brown School students at Wash. U., we’re also exploring practicum options [for] Brown School students who want to use their practicum time to gain hands-on knowledge and experience working with LGBTQIA* populations in St Louis,” Cai said. “I think they have a great opportunity to do that through the helpline, so we’re looking for practicum supervisors as well as interested practicum students.”

Kochman is working with Cai to try to establish the helpline as a practicum.

“I have at times found myself frustrated. I’m in school for social work; social work should be work in the community, working to improve people’s lives. And I feel like the Brown School is a bit of a bubble and I’m not doing as much connecting with and work with the community here in St. Louis as I’d like,” Kochman said. “So I think this would be an awesome practicum opportunity, because it is specifically that, it’s what I’m looking for, it’s connection with resources and referrals here, connecting with the community here and helping others do that.”

Senior Lecturer and Assistant Dean of Arts & Sciences Jami Ake said she believes Washington University students will be interested in applying to be volunteers.

“They are familiar with that sort of peer model and I think that kind of model has managed to create a positive sort of sense of things on campus,” Ake said. “People think highly of resources that are peer led and peer staffed like S.A.R.A.H, like Uncle Joe’s, and so I think that that’s incredibly helpful in allowing students to see the possibilities for another kind of resource.”

Ake also said that the helpline is a “win-win” for those involved.

“The people who are part of the population, the LGBTQIA* population in St. Louis certainly benefit from having a supportive person on the other end of a phone line,” Ake said. “And there are lots and lots of people who want to find a way to do direct work and really get engaged with the issues and see, there are some possibilities on campus, but they’re very student focused, they’re not community focused as much as this one is.”

Cai said that another challenge the helpline faces will be making sure it’s seen as accessible.

“I’ve been told the PrideCenter has historically been seen as a very white space and resource,” Cai said. “I think another challenge that I’m very passionate about tackling is making sure that the resource is seen as something that’s accessible to LGBTQIA* people and allies, friends, and agencies of all races and ethnicities and that we steer away from using a white-centric lens when training our volunteers or in thinking about what concerns callers might face.”

To address the accessibility challenge, Cai said that the helpline’s training curriculum will include diversity and inclusion training and anti-racism training.

“I think as a helpline that is trying to enter a community and support a community, being in touch with what the community needs and has concerns about is an ongoing process and that’s related to how accessible people would think of the resource as, so I think it’s going to be ongoing work that we’ll have to do,” Cai said.