Use this form to apply to Trans Youth Leadership Summit 2019. Please review TYLS programming at www.transstudent.org/tyls before completing this questionnaire. This application is due Friday, March 1st, 2019 at 11:59 PM CST.

If you would rather make a 2-5 minute video than answer essay questions, you can do so by answering the essay questions in video form and attaching a link to our video question on this form.

If you want to nominate someone, you can do so at https://tinyurl.com/tyls2019nom

Trans Youth Leadership Summit (TYLS) is a collaborative fellowship program providing young transgender people the opportunity to work toward liberation through collective organizing for solidarity, advocacy, and empowerment. TYLS fosters the skills of dozens of emerging trans leaders and puts them at the forefront of critical issues transgender people face. We are bringing together revolutionary young trans leaders to heal from transphobic violence, build communities, learn how to enact restorative justice, and create direct action. TYLS looks toward root causes rather than simply covering up the effects of anti-transgender violence.

There are currently no other national programs centering the leadership of young transgender people. Recognizing this, we will provide participants with funding for future conferences and events after the summit and connect with them through check-ins to further foster activism in their communities. TYLS is NOT just a summit, it is an ongoing relationship between trans community members. We invite all former TYLS alumnx to apply to return to future summits to share their knowledge and wisdom with new participants, however the spots are very limited in order to provide this life changing experience to as many trans youth as possible. Additionally, we will provide all participants with an all-expense paid trip to Austin, TX for our annual summit so we can work together in person.

If you have questions that are not answered on our web site or this application, please email our Membership Director, Ezra Morales at ezra@transstudent.org.

Eligibility requirements:
1. You are trans, two spirit, Hijra, Muxe, genderqueer, or non-binary (please contact us if you feel your identity should be included on this list)
2. You are located in the United States
3. You are available to go to our Summit in Austin, TX from July 11th-14th, 2019
4. You are a youth (under the age of 26)

We will contact you by March 15th, 2019 if you are selected as a finalist. If you are selected, you will be emailed further questions to set up a Google Hangout, Skype, or phone interview. If you are Deaf or hard of hearing, we are happy to do a finalist interview completely over email as well.

To be transparent in our selection process, we are evaluating your application based on the following criteria:

1. Positionality: Your identities and how they influence your activism - 30%
2. Past/future activism and practices: Your commitment to solidarity, your dedication to transformative, grassroots, and systemic change, and the communities/groups/organizations you're involved with - 40%
3. Geography: We prioritize people in the "Deep South" (the summit's location) and locations with historically elevated rates of violence against marginalized communities such as Southern and rural communities (don't worry if you're from a different area, this only accounts for 10% of our evaluation)  - 10%

We prioritize people of color, immigrants, houseless people, disabled people, younger people, womxn, rural people, and other intersectionally  marginalized trans youth when making selections in the radical transgender tradition of "ground up" activism.

While we wish we were able to select everyone who applies and have an open event, unfortunately our capacity is limited by our size and funding.

While we ask if you need financial assistance to get to and stay in Austin during the summit, we DO NOT take this into account when making selections. We can provide you with funding for all costs incurred on your trip (transportation, food, etc). This question is just to predict how many people we can accept into our 2019 program.

NOTE: This form will not autosave. You may want to write down your long answers on a text editor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.