April 27, 2012
Student Ambassador Amelia Roskin-Frazee One of The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40″
Amelia Roskin-Frazee is a GLSEN Student Ambassador and one of The Advocate‘s “Forty Under 40.” Amelia came out last year as lesbian and quickly became a proud and active LGBT advocate. In addition to founding her school’s first ever GSA, she created the Make It Safe Project, an online intiative that donates LGBT books and resources to schools and homeless shelters that wouldn’t otherwise have the resources.
Here’s an excerpt from The Advocate.
Though she’s only a freshman in high school, Amelia Roskin-Frazee’s résumé of activism is hefty. She established her middle school’s GSA, she’s one of 18 student ambassadors for the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, and she founded her own LGBT organization.
“I was going to my current school’s library and I found that there were pretty much no books about sexual orientation or gender expression,” Roskin-Frazee says. The dearth of LGBT literature inspired her to establish the Make It Safe Project, which provides schools with queer literature. Through her fund-raising efforts, she’s purchased books like It Gets Better and Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens and distributed them to school libraries.
“I’ve given around 20 boxes of books to schools and youth homeless shelters that otherwise didn’t have these resources,” she says. While she sees herself eventually being an “underpaid writer-teacher,” Roskin-Frazee says LGBT advocacy will always be part of her life.
Read the full article on Advocate.com.
If you will be in grades 8 – 12 next school year, you’re invited to apply to GLSEN’s Student Ambassador Program.
Elizabeth Free is the communications manager at GLSEN--the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. Elizabeth joined GLSEN in 2009 to make schools safer for all students and says one of the best parts of her job is working with GLSEN's Student Ambassadors. She is originally from Texas and has a B.A. in Public Relations and Advertising from the University of Houston.
