Click here to view the FINAL REPORT!
The Final Report contains: 1) Executive Summary; 2) Final Summary; and 3) Appendix
The purpose of Twice Blessed 2.0: The Jewish LGBTQ2SIA+ Initiative is to understand the current needs of the Jewish LGBTQ2SIA+ community. Part of the initiative was a self-identification survey conducted by JQT Vancouver in partnership with JFS Vancouver, BC (Jewish Family Services), and with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
In 2020, the conversations between JQT and JFS started in regards to diversity education for JFS staff and the changes JFS needs to make to be more welcoming and inclusive, which led to a larger conversation about assessing accessibility and engaging the community itself.
This report contains the findings from the survey collected between February 2, 2022 to March 27, 2022. In this report, data points from the 2022 survey are also compared to data points from a community needs assessment conducted by JFS in 2004. Twice Blessed: The Jewish LGBT Project - Needs Assessment of the Jewish LGBTQ Community in the Greater Vancouver Area. For full transparency, this survey was conducted, but only resurfaced in 2021 during an interview with Jacqueline Walters, who conducted the 2004 survey, for JQT's BC Jewish Queer & Trans Oral History Project.
With JFS' blessing, this survey and subsequent report is a labour of love, distributed, analysed, and summarized by dedicated JQTs seeking to affect positive change for those who identify as LGBTQ2SIA+ within the Jewish community of Greater Vancouver and beyond. This survey was developed off of the 2004 community needs assessment and, while many questions remained the same, some others were added or language was altered for clearer results. The survey was distributed widely, and garnered 111 responses (doubling the data from 2004). The findings in this survey reflect the needs of Jewish LGBTQ2SIA+ individuals, all of whom have different identities and varying relationships with the Jewish and LGBTQ2SIA+ community.
13 CALLS TO ACTION
Results from survey reveal a dire need for change on the part of Jewish community organizations. The order of calls to action does not equate to priority. There is a total of 13 calls to action and each one is just as important as the next.
