New changes at Friendly city safe space
A lot has been happening within the Friendly City Safe Space (FCSS) over the last few months. From new leadership team positions, to an overhaul of our organization of the space, to new hours. In this post, we are going to highlight all the changes and catch you up for the next time you visit our space.
New leadership team
As a volunteer run organization, we could not do what we do without our amazing volunteers, and our volunteer leadership team. Since our Director Dandy has joined the team, they have added new team members to help our organization run more effectively and stronger than before. Our Leadership team now consists of a Social Media Manager, a Facilities and Library Coordinator, Event Coordinator, Fundraising Coordinator, Outreach Coordinator, an interim Volunteer Coordinator, and our Site Director.
Through the support of our leadership team, we have been diligently working to help FCSS grow and improve. We have been working on a lot including: creating a lot of core documents, updating our programming, improving our internal communication and strategies, improving the experience for our visitors within our space, revamping our volunteer training, improving our website, improving our facilities, and so much more! Be sure to thank our leadership team for all the work they have done!
We have a few open positions we are hoping to fill as well, including our Volunteer Coordinator, and members to join our fundraising committee to help with grant writing. If you are interested in joining our leadership team, you can reach out to Dandy through email and submit your application and schedule a time to meet.
Changes within the space
As we mentioned above, there have been a lot of changes inside Friendly City Safe Space. The space looks completely different than earlier this year. Thanks to Elias and the rest of the leadership team, we have begun improving the layout, organization, vibe, and general purpose of our space. Our clothes closet, which once was an unruly beast; has now gotten most of the way organized, there is still work to do, but it has come a long way. New shelves have been added, more organization has been made around our pants section, new shoe racks, and accessory stations have been added.
Our mutual aid room has gotten a makeover. Starting with a community mural for Trans Day of Visibility earlier this year, we have since added new shelving thanks to a generous donation from a community member, and a deep freezer. We now have all of our mutual aid offerings, food pantry, and gender-affirming clothing (binders, tucking kits, etc) all in one place. Everything in here is free and up for the taking for whoever needs these resources. We are working on expanding our mutual aid room further as we get access to more shelving.
Our new Coworking Room has started to take shape. It is still in Beta, but through a tech grant, we now have community desktops and printer where people can come, utilize our wifi and our resources to work on any project or digital task that they need. Our hope with this room is that is will be a useful resource to help people gain access to opportunities they might not have had.
Our Library has also undergone a lot of changes! We have improved our layout to make it cozy and inviting. New decorations have started to adorn the walls and shelves of our library. This is one of our most loved and used rooms within our organization, we love seeing our community gather and connect in this space.
Our Dining Room has also had a bit of a facelift. Things are a lot more organized now. We have a brand new (new to us) rug, inviting a bright pop of color into the space. Our roomba has been revived and is diligently working to help keep our space clean, and our vacuum has also been fixed! We now also have a convenient water dispenser within our space.
Lastly our yellow room, now called the Sensory Room has started to become a space where people can hang out in a lower sensory environment. We have sand trays, toys, fidgets, yoga mats, and some children’s toys. This room is still having work done, but it has come so far from where it started earlier this year!
If you would like to help our organization continue to update the space, you can find our registry here.
New hours
FCSS has updated our hours for the remainder of 2025. To help us be more consistent, we have updated our hours to be a little shorter, to help make it easier for volunteers to staff our space and keep it open. We had a lot of closures over the last few months, and we believe this will help us improve our consistency as we work on improving our structure. As we get more volunteers we hope to expand our hours again, and in the new year we hope to be open more to better serve our community.
New hours of Operation
Mon-Thurs: CLOSED
Friday: 4pm-7pm
Sat & Sun: 12pm-4pm
What is next?
Our hope is to continue improving our organization so we can best serve our community. We hope to start having more events within our space, have improved volunteer management systems, hold more workshops and trainings across a variety of needs, build a strong donor program to help us better serve our community, build more avenues for connection and community, and so so much more! We are so thankful for all of the support, help, patience, understanding, and love we have received from our community since our formation in 2021 to now. We truly couldn’t do what we do without our community around us every step of the way. Thank you for being you, for being a helping hand, a shoulder to lean on, a strong and vibrant community, and for believing in us! We love you.
If you would like to donate to our organization to help us keep delivering life changing services to our LGBTQ+ Community, you can do so below.
Looking to become a volunteer? Join our waitlist for upcoming volunteer trainings!
-The Friendly City Safe Space Leadership Team
