By Vanessa • 14 years ago

Bea Arthur leaves 300K to homeless LGBT youth


Just when thought you couldn’t miss this woman more, we find that Bea Arthur has left $300,000 to the Ali Forney Center in New York, an organization that supports homeless LGBT youth.
The center supplies a number of services to youth around the city, including food, emergency housing, medical treatment and HIV testing. The announcement of Bea’s donation came with the center’s plans to build a house that will shelter 12 homeless youth and name the building in her honor. Executive director Carl Siciliano said they were “overwhelmed with gratitude that Bea saw that LGBT youth deserve as much love and support as any other young person and that she placed so much value in the work we do to protect them and to help them rebuild lives.” Thank you, Bea.
The Ali Forney Center was named after a homeless queer teen who dedicated his life to helping other homeless queer youth, was an HIV prevention worker, and advocated for the NYPD to investigate a series of murders of homeless queer youth in New York City. In December of 1997, Ali was murdered. Check out more about the org here.
Via The Advocate.

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