Dear Facilitators,
Thank you for creating a space for queer, trans people of Korean descent (KQTs) to be in connection and community!
Your care towards building safer, accessible, more inclusive, and affirming spaces for our community is a vital part of our collective healing and thriving. We want to ensure you feel supported and have access to the tools you need.
This toolkit helps to prepare KQT facilitators who want to host a virtual space for community members. From teach-ins to workshop spaces, social events, book clubs, or game nights, this toolkit empowers and inspires you to take these tools and build something new you’ve been dreaming of for the community.
While there are many types of spaces a facilitator may hold, this toolkit aims to cover some basic guidelines that will help facilitate a virtual space for KQTs to feel more manageable and more accessible.
We can’t wait to see what you’ll create!
— KQTx National Network
Facilitator Toolkit Project Group (Version 1.0), 2022
How to Use this Toolkit
Start here: KQTx Community Guidelines
Before you explore the toolkit, we recommend that you start by first reading KQTx’s Community Guidelines. These foundational guidelines are a helpful introduction to understanding the beautiful diversity of the Korean Queer Trans experience and ways we can all create better conditions for safety, welcome, accessibility, and inclusion to be experienced together.
Read the KQTx Community Guidelines.
The Facilitator Journey
A facilitator’s role is active for much longer than the main event itself. In this toolkit, we’ve divided the journey into three stages (Pre-Event, In-Event, and Post-Event) with tips and tools you can leverage at each step. Each stage comes with a checklist, general tips, and notes for crisis handling if things don’t go as planned.
As it is with each facilitator, each event will also be unique with specific parameters. Please take whatever you feel is helpful from this toolkit to create your unique event.
The Toolkit Is Especially Useful For:
- New KQT facilitators seeking to hold their first virtual event for KQTs
- Established facilitators seeking to include more cultural/contextually specific practices for a KQT audience
Some Important Notes to Keep in Mind:
- This toolkit centers Korean queer/trans facilitators who are seeking to hold virtual spaces for other Korean queer/trans community members. However, you can also apply many of the frameworks and tools to non-KQT spaces.
- The specific context of this toolkit is primarily in English-speaking spaces in the U.S. Readers are advised to keep this original context in mind, especially when adapting the tools for their own specific contexts.
A Note About Community Safety
We acknowledge that the lived experiences of many KQTs and queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of color are permeated with aspects of emotionally sensitive and triggering issues. The toolkit will cover some areas of how to address crisis moments. However, this toolkit is not a substitute for providing direct support for the community regarding individual mental health or a direct response to incidents of abuse/violence or other trauma.
As facilitators, we invite you to consider trauma-informed care more deeply when creating your virtual spaces and making sure resources are available. You may consider providing information for providers and resources that are accessible, local, free/low-cost, or providing after-care follow-up with participants who exhibited emotional distress.
Suppose you believe there is a strong likelihood that participants will experience emotional distress due to the topic of your event. In that case, we recommend consulting a trained provider or person experienced with trauma-informed care to be present in your space to offer live support.
Reminder: This toolkit is also not intended to be a substitute for attending a live facilitation training.
If you are desiring more experience and practice, we strongly recommend attending a KQTx Live Facilitation Training and/or consulting an experienced facilitator who is familiar with the community you are serving and the content you are addressing.
Want to attend a live training?
Sign up for the next KQTx Live Facilitation Training to have an opportunity to integrate and practice the skills covered in this toolkit with other facilitators.
To learn about the next training, visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SzLK6b8qcgIz1ePVE6PXQ7kUwd2KEi05RbrfF-NXhgA/edit
Other training you may be interested in: https://forms.gle/nhLi4xUocBjWZT9M6
