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Our Mission

GSA Network is a next-generation TQ2S+ racial and gender justice organization that empowers and trains queer, trans and allied youth leaders to advocate, organize, and mobilize an intersectional movement for safer schools and healthier communities.

As a national, youth-rooted movement amplifying the leadership of trans, queer, and Two-Spirit (TQ2S+) young people we strengthen GSA clubs and youth groups as powerful hubs of leadership, community building, and political organizing. We do this by equipping youth with the tools to build collective power, shift culture, and transform the political, cultural, and educational systems that define their paths.

Our work is centered on the core belief that trans, Queer, and Two Spirit+ young people exist, belong, and have a right to self-determination.

What We Do

We resource TQ2S+ young people through three interconnected pathways: our national network, our national school, and our national campaign work. 

National Network

We host the National GSA Registry, a nationwide directory connecting GSA clubs to leadership opportunities, youth collectives, advocacy tools, care resources, and club technical support, helping build a strong network of young queer and trans leaders.

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We anchor the National Association of GSA Networks, a coalition of more than 40 statewide organizations supporting thousands of GSA clubs and youth workers across the country.  We also steward GSA Network of California, connecting over 1,100 GSA clubs and sustaining one of the largest youth-led LGBTQ+ organizing ecosystems in the nation.  Across these networks, we provide training, leadership pathways, and shared strategy rooted in racial, gender, and educational justice.

National School

Through our political education curriculum, STAR Freedom School and Gender Justice Leadership Programs (GJLP), our trans youth narrative power collaboration with Transgender Law Center, we resource young leaders and grassroots partners through political education curriculum, cultural organizing, and leadership skills that build collective power.

National Campaign

We support youth-led action through GSAsUnite!, our online campaign and petition platform that powers local and national organizing, amplifies youth demands, and connects TQ2S+ youth across states to fight for safety, dignity, and structural change in their schools and communities.  Alongside movement legal organizations we back legislative campaigns, supporting youth as they speak out against harmful laws and policies that threaten their safety and rights.

Our Strategy

Devising Freedom, launched in 2022, is our organizational strategy that spans from 2022-2030 across two election years in the United States as a mandate to continue to deepen and expand our youth-led power-building. This strategy is upheld by four pillars:

The Four Pillars

Homecoming or community building: The disruption of TQ2S+ isolation through base-building, cooperative leadership, resource sharing, and collective action.

Truthtelling or storytelling: Systematically recording & preserving the experiential wisdom of TQ2S+ youth in service of posterity and political praxis.

Spirit Sustaining, or healing justice: Tending to the material realities of TQ2S+ communities, individuals, and their families by employing a holistic arsenal of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and somatic defenses against state violence. 

Stargayzing or world-building: Cultivating the political will to move beyond all forms of captivity through intergenerational wonder, creativity

We organize GSAs, empowering them to educate their schools and communities, advocate for just policies that protect trans, queer and Two Spirit youth from harassment and violence, and build alliances not only across sexual orientation and gender identity lines, but also across race, ethnicity, and class. Our resources and trainings are designed to facilitate this coalition building.

Our History

We began in San Francisco in 1998, when LGBTQ+ youth came together to support GSA clubs and fight for safe schools. In 1999, youth leaders helped pass the California Student Safety and Violence Prevention Act and formed our first Youth Council. By 2000, we held our first Activist Camp, and within just a few years, we were supporting hundreds of GSAs across California.

In 2005, we helped launch the National Association of GSA Networks, which grew to include more than 40 statewide organizations representing thousands of clubs. Over the next decade, we deepened our commitment to racial and gender justice, opened new offices in the South and Midwest, and in 2015 shifted to a Co-Executive Director model led by LGBTQ+ people of color. In 2016, after listening to youth across the country, we became Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network to reflect the full diversity of identities within GSAs.

More recently, we’ve continued to grow nationally. In 2020, youth leaders pushed forward the Police Free Schools movement as we expanded programs like the Two-Spirit Initiative and Gender Justice Leadership Programs.  In 2022, we launched our long-term strategy, Devising Freedom, a roadmap through 2030 grounded in the brilliance of TQ2S+ youth.  And in 2024, we introduced STAR School and the STAR School Fellowship to resource young leaders and grassroots partners in the National Association.

Our team is made up of people who’ve lived this work, adults who once founded their own GSAs, youth council alumni, and organizers who have led campaigns. Our intergenerational board includes young leaders and adult allies from across the country.

Today, we carry forward a legacy of youth power, building a future where every TQ2S+ young person can lead with autonomy, dignity, and delight.