YOUTH
EMPOWERMENT
PERFORMANCE
PROJECT
Director of Services
Ka'Riel Gaiter
Ka’Riel is native to Chicago and has been an activist, artist, educator, and advocate for the LGBTQI+ and POC community since 2011 on issues around resource deprivation, trauma informed care, mental health advocacy, and the arts as liberation. In collaboration with organizations like the Youth Empowerment Performance Project, the Broadway Youth Center, Chicago Youth Storage Initiative, south-side steering committee and a plethora of additional social service agencies, they have advocated for and implemented inclusive resources for unstably housed marginalized youth, traumatized street based youth, and lack of adequate resources in POC communities on national platforms over the past 10 years. Ka'Riel has received awards like "Chicago's Women and Femme” award, Windy City Times “30 under 30”, among others, to celebrate the radical advocacy work they have done as a pioneer of social change in the Chicagoland.
Currently Ka'Riel is working with the Youth Empowerment Performance Project as the Director of Services to create more opportunities to dismantle adultism, regressive policies, frivolous culture in social services. They have a passion to challenge social service policy stakeholders and institutions to create more efficient services.