The Letters Project
Voices for LGBTQ+ Youth
Letters across Generations for LGBTQ+ Youth
We are gathering and sharing letters from the LGBTQ+ community and allies to support queer youth and their families with the power of our collective voices.
Let's make a chorus of affirming voices to rise above those who would silence us.
Coro Allegro, Boston's LGBTQ+ and allied classical chorus, and community partners like the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth (BAGLY) and the Mass Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) invite you to add your own message of encouragement, affirmation, or support for LGBTQ+ youth to the Letters Project. Let's raise our voices together to counter all those seeking to erode civil rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people—especially transgender and queer youth and their families—and silence expression of LGBTQ+ experiences and identities.
What's at stake —why we can make an impact by speaking out:
Research from the Trevor Project shows that LGBTQ+ youth are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers, but that the presence of affirming voices and communities can have a huge impact for LGBTQ+ youth at risk, reducing suicide ideation by over 40%.
Add your voice with your own open letter of support.
Your letter can be long or short and sweet. All that matters is we are standing up and speaking out for each other. Your message can be in text or image form — that's up to you! You can type short messages right on the form provided, or upload longer letters or instagram ready images (1080 x1080 pixels, 1:1 ratio). Let us know how you wish to sign your letter or if you prefer it to be anonymous. Coro Allegro and our community partners will be sharing letters submitted with LGBTQ+ youth and their families through social media, websites, and exhibits at youth centers, concerts, and festivals, and public art.
Need ideas for what to write?
Write an open letter as a friend to an LGBTQ+ youth out there and just let them know that they are enough and that you stand with them. Think about your past experiences. What did you need to hear? Share the words that helped get you through. What do you understand now that might help someone else. Or write as if to a future child to share your hopes for them and commitment to them. Say GAY and celebrate the LGBTQ+ experience. Let the reader know there are affirming communities out there waiting for them. Writing a letter is an opportunity to pause, reflect, and share that can bring both reader and writer healing and empowerment.
Inspired by moving letters of love to a transgender boy and a survivor of conversion therapy:
On November 6, 2022, Coro Allegro presented the world premiere of HERE I AM: I AM HERE, by composer Andrea Clearfield, based on open letters by LGBTQ+ youth advocates Mimi Lemay and Sam Brinton. Mimi wrote to her then 5-year-old transgender son about her path to understanding and affirming who he always had been: "I believe you. You know where you belong." Sam wrote to the memory of their own 12-year-old self, struggling to survive the conversion therapy their parents had sent them to in a misguided attempt to "save" them: “I, the grown up you, your fairy godmother...am here to thank you for surviving. There's nothing to change. You are a perfect, beautiful little child. Live life and know that you are loved." In 2024, the Stonewall Chorale, the nation's first LGBTQ+ chorus, performed a moving reprise of the work in New York. And in July, 2024, Coro Allegro performs it once more for thousands of LGBTQ+ singers at the international LGBTQ+ GALA Choruses Festival in Minneapolis.
THANK YOU FOR ADDING YOUR VOICE!
Partners for the Letters Project
