The Pride Tree

Bringing resources to LGBTQ+ youth and their families, The Pride Tree provides a safe environment for discussions and education on LGBTQ+ issues. 

Grant Frailich, Founder and President of Pride Tree and a Teach for America alumni, started the organization in December 2020. He found inspiration after hearing about a 15-year-old gender-fluid teen being cyber-bullied for their identity and how commonly they received death threats. 

“As a straight, white man, I’ve never had to deal with that; I don’t directly relate to their experience, but their story moved me,” he said. Frailich explained that his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, used to always say to him: “Millions of people died because good people stayed back and remained silent.”

“Hearing their story and having my grandmother’s words drilled into me, I felt I had to do something and take some action,” he said. “I started thinking about how I could use my privilege in order to do good.” 

Finding a niche in the community, he created The Pride Tree with a mission to create safe environments where LGBTQ+ youth and allies can explore their own identity and express themselves openly and without fear!” 

Working to create LGBTQ+-friendly cultures within schools and across them, he explained that “Schools are the focus. We want to bring the resources directly to these kids.”

The Pride Tree Programs

The Pride Tree works to accomplish its mission through four different programs it offers or is currently working on. 

Club Pride Tree

Through the Club Pride Tree Program, the organization and guest speakers visit local schools directly. They talk about issues including gender and sexuality, pronouns, coming out, being an ally, laws, and LGBTQ+ history. They also cover representation in pop culture. This includes what actors and singers are gay, what TV shows have LGBTQ+ characters, and so on. 

“We talk about things lots of organizations don’t discuss,” Frailich said. The Pride Tree recently piloted this program at their first school. 

As students return to in-person learning in fall, The Pride Tree wants to expand its program to new schools. 

“Our goal is to have six schools by August set up for weekly events and scale from there,” Frailich said. Similar to the GSA, the Gay-Straight Alliance, found at some high schools, The Pride Tree operates as a “club that comes to you.”

Parent Program

With the Parent Program, The Pride Tree provides parents a safe place for parents of LGBTQ+ children to ask questions. 

“We want to be that place a parent can feel safe and comfortable asking what to do if their child is gender fluid or trans, or anything they might not be knowledgeable on but wants to learn about,” Frailich said. “We want them to understand that gender identity and sexuality is part of how people identify and that their kid is still their kid no matter what.”

At this time, Frailich said that he plans on most likely providing this program at the schools. “We want everything to be as inclusive and accessible as possible to everyone,” he said. 

Mentoring Program

Another fascinating resource The Pride Tree offers, the mentoring program, involves pairing youths with people who work in the areas of study they have interests in. 

“Whether a kid is interested in art, crime investigation and law, medicine, and anything else, we’ll pair them with a mentor with direct experience in that field,” Frailich explained. 

In addition, if a student finds that they actually don’t like that field of interest, they can try a different field until they find one they like and want to pursue. 

“We want it to be an ongoing process. If you join the law cohort in 8th grade and discover you’re not into law, maybe you’ll join the art cohort in 9th grade. Don’t like that one? You can try the medical cohort in 10th grade, and so on,” he explained. “That way, before spending thousands to figure it out yourself right out of high school, you can experience it firsthand. And, you’ll have help from someone who’s been there and done it already so they can guide you and help navigate everything.”

Overall, this program helps eliminate the gaps between middle school and high school, high school and college, and college and the working world.

“There’s someone there with you every step of the way,”  Frailich said. The program is still young as The Pride Tree works out the logistics of everything and recruits mentors. Frailich said he wants to offer the program monthly.

Camp Pride Tree

Another program The Pride Tree is working to bring about next summer in 2022 is Camp Pride Tree. 

Camp Curriculum

This program involves the traditional summer camp experience without the gender norms baked into the experience. Part of breaking down gender norms, Frailich explained, involves removing the application of gender to things like clothing or make-up and open it up to where anyone may participate in whatever the activities are. Volunteering in camps for over 15 years, he shared how he allowed the girls and the camps to dress him up or put make-up on him if they asked.

At most other camps, the girls and boys are usually all separated into different cohorts. Since there’s a mix of identities and orientations between the youths attending Camp Pride Tree, having things split up by gender norms goes against the point of the experience. 

Ideally, The Pride Tree wants to provide youths with a four-day-four-night experience complete with traditional camp activities, like hiking, playing sports, making music, and more. In addition to these traditional activities, Camp Pride Tree would also integrate various workshops normally facilitated at a camp.  

Giving examples of these workshops, Frailich said they’d bring out various people to do sessions through the camp for the kids. This includes doctors working with LGBTQ+ patients, lawyers overseeing LGBTQ+ discrimination cases, performers like Cirque du Solei castmembers, and more. That way, the kids receive a variety of opportunities at camp. 

“We plan to have two activities every day as opt-in workshops for the kids,” Frailich explained. Moreover, the guest speakers who conduct the workshops and activities only have to stay for the session. Afterward, they can go back to the city instead of staying up there for the whole camp. 

Coming Summer 2022 

Presently, The Pride Tree is working this program out to be ready by next summer. Since the organization launched, Frailich and his team have worked to earn the parents’ confidence in the program.

“Since the beginning, we’ve built that trust with the parents and these kids who would come to camp,” Frailich explained. “It’s a pretty big thing to ask parents to let someone take their child to the woods for four days.” 

On top of that, he said that they’re raising all the funds to send the kids to camp in general. 

“We want the camp to be free for the kids,” he said. “We want camp to be an experience every kid can have, regardless of their financial situation.”

It can get pretty expensive to send a kid to a camp, so money often bars low-income families with kids from having that experience.

Camp Pride Tree Compared to Other LGBT-Friendly Camps

Frailich shared that while approximately a dozen camps in the country work with LGBTQ+ kids, none exist in Nevada. This means that parents in Nevada who wish to send their kids to an LGBT-friendly camp must send them out of state. 

“Why are we sending Las Vegas kids to other states instead of keeping them local?” Frailich said. Adding to the initial cost of sending a kid to camp, the expenses increase if one travels out-of-state for it. 

Moreover, Frailich said that most other camps with a strict LGBT+ focus often exclude straight kids from joining. Or, they might offer the opportunity in an off-handed way. “They’ll say, “You can come if you want to,” he said, explaining that it’s almost presented as an after-thought rather than an invitation. 

“One motto I’ve seen is ‘Out of the closet, into the woods,’” he said. “Super catchy motto, but you know that a straight kid who might be interested in going to camp with their LGBT+ friends might be hesitant to attend one like that if they think they’re required to identify as LGBT+ to attend.” 

Frailich added that he acknowledges the importance of the differences and diversity between LGBT-friendly camps and that he’s happy those safe spaces are available to LGBTQ+ youths. Ultimately, it opened an opportunity to The Pride Tree and helped define their niche of inclusivity so that kids who aren’t LGBTQ+ are welcome regardless of their identity or orientation.

This way, he explained, straight kids also get the opportunity to learn and experience things through the eyes of their LGBTQ+ peers. This is to break down any barriers and equip them with the knowledge to be better friends and allies.

Additional Resources in the Works

In addition to the other programs, Frailich said that The Pride Tree wants to roll out one-time events to facilitate conversations further.

These events might include conversations with someone like a local doctor who works directly with patients in the process of transitional surgery. At the event, the guest can discuss the procedure with those interested in that particular event’s topic of conversation and answer any questions people have. 

If you’d like to be a guest speaker, please contact Grant.Frailich@thepridetreeLV.org