STAR FREEDOM SCHOOL
THE WORK
STAR Freedom School is an expansion of GSA Network’s programming under our organizational strategy Devising Freedom, designed to support, educate, and empower trans, queer, and two-spirit youth. Built upon more than 25 years of youth organizing, STAR Freedom School provides a multidimensional learning space where TQ2S+ community share essential knowledge for resilience and power building.
STAR Curriculum
A growing library of toolkits, videos, trainings, mental health resources, and artistic materials tailored for TQ2S+ youth, trainers and their allies. Curated by our Curriculum Advisory Committee and created with young people supporting local grassroots organizing through our STAR Fellowship these resources are crafted to build youth power.
Youth Organizing Fellowship
A leadership development initiative that resources grassroots organizations in our National Association by providing stipends and training access for TQ2S+ youth fellows they identify. These fellows engage in local advocacy, develop educational content for the STAR Curriculum that aligns with grassroots priorities, and lead narrative-shifting campaigns. Through training and storytelling, fellows challenge stereotypes, counter harmful narratives, and create pathways toward liberation, strengthening both local and national movements for education justice and policy reform.
Stargayzing
Evoking the fourth pillar of our Devising Freedom strategy this initiative empowers us to reimagine and build alternatives to today’s learning environments through intergenerational experimentation, culture work, and artistic design. It serves as a creative space for interdisciplinary artists and thinkers to craft transformative educational models that are anti-capitalist, community-centered, and radically inclusive.
History
STAR Freedom School draws its name and spirit from Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), the radical collective founded by Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, who supported trans and queer youth facing houselessness. Sylvia’s vision centered on meeting people’s basic needs first, empowering them to learn and sustain themselves—a vision rooted in the mutual aid and alternative education models that have long bolstered movements for liberation. One of these models, the Freedom Schools of the 1960s, established by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), provided Black communities in the South with transformative education, positioning learning as a direct vehicle for social change. Inspired by this legacy of community-rooted education and support, STAR Freedom School emerges as a national program dedicated to equipping BIPOC TQ2S+ youth with tools for power-building and self-determination. Their leadership and legacy live on through collective memory and study.
Curriculum Drop
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STAR Freedom School is GSA Network’s programming under Devising Freedom, our ten year organizational strategy for youth led liberation.
quick links
Contact Info
- starschool@gsanetwork.org
- 548 Market St. Suite 53568 San Francisco, CA 94104-5401