Galjer Yangwaue
Over the summer of 2025, I partnered with Transforming Generations (TG), a nonprofit organization based in St. Paul that provides support, advocacy, healing, and education to end gender based violence that is culturally and trauma informed towards Hmong and Southeast Asian communities in the Twin Cities. Transforming Generations provides mental health resources (holistic healing), advocacy services for victims & survivors of domestic and/or sexual violence, Queer Justice programing, and youth programming. During my 10-week fellowship, I worked and contributed to three different projects.
The first project that I worked on was creating the physical 50th Year LGBTQ+ Anniversary Timeline and presenting it at the Transforming Generations Pride Fest. The 50th year LGBTQ+ Timeline honors Hmong and Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ community members in Minnesota, bringing more awareness to their stories, contributions, joy, hardships, and bringing more visibility to the Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ voices for the past 50 years. It also highlights and recognizes 50 years of Hmong people in the United States. This project consisted of researching, documentation, presentation, community engagement, and collaboration. I had the great honor of taking on this project that Transforming Generations will continue to keep building upon.
The second project I had the honor of contributing to is facilitating TG’s Youth summer program called, Adventure Time. Adventure Time is a summer program that Transforming Generations hosts to help teach youth ages 13-15 years old about consent, boundaries, self-empowerment, digital safety, gender identity, sexual health safety, and more. I contributed to this project by helping facilitate sessions and lessons every Tuesday at Como Park alongside Teeb Lee, the Program Associate at TG. I also created team building activities, activities/materials to help teach youth about boundaries, and various lesson plans.
The third project I had the great opportunity to help contribute and develop is helping create programming for Transforming Generations Mental Health Community Workshops and creating curriculum for TG’s Youth SA support Group. I worked alongside Lisa Yang, the mental health therapist at TG, to help facilitate the monthly community healing workshops for the Southeast Asian community in the Twin cities and to create curriculum for the Youth SA Support Group. I created and facilitated a Paj Huam (Hmong Poetry) community healing workshop, teaching community members how to write Hmong poetry and how it can become a healing practice. These two projects were a rewarding experience that taught me a lot about how to work with vulnerable communities facing violence and/or searching for healing resources.
My Chuck Green Fellowship was a memorable and rewarding experience. I am grateful to have been able to work directly with Hmong and Southeast Asian community members and develop impactful programs and resources. Being able to develop curriculum, programming, and facilitating many sessions at Transforming Generations has taught me how to be an active and engaged community member working towards ending gender based violence. I am forever thankful for the Transforming Generations team, Professor Rothin Datta, and my cohort for all their support and guidance.