Educational Resources

Questioning your sexuality can be difficult to navigate as a young Muslim. This resource is for young Muslims who want support around their various complicated identities, from religion to sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Families Speak Out About School contains a video interview study (2014-2020) that was designed and conducted by a research team from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Over the last six years the team has included 15 team members, all of whom work and study at the University of Toronto. 

The goal of the study was to video interview LGBTQ families across Ontario about their children’s experiences in school and share findings from these interviews with teachers, community educators and other LGBTQ families. Between 2015 and 2018 they interviewed 37 families from urban, suburban and rural communities across the province of Ontario.  You can find excerpts from their interviews on this website.  
 

The Every Teacher Project is a national research study that was carried out by the University of Winnipeg in partnership with the Manitoba Teachers Society (MTS). Every teacher organization in Canada assisted the researchers and project partners in getting the word out about the initial online survey, where over 3,400 teachers from across Canada participated in the largest study to date worldwide on teachers' perspectives on LGBTQ-inclusive education.

2SLGBTQ+ Interfaith panel discussion on gender, sexuality and faith organized by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board on February 9th, 2022. Participants heard from Kusha Dadui, OCDSB Trans and Gender Diverse Student Support Coordinator, and a panel including El-Farouk Khaki - queer Imam and co-founder of Salaam Canada, Caro Ibrahim - BIPOC Christain faith-based counsellor and Orev Katz - 2SLGBTQ+ non-binary rabbi who has done a lot of work with incarcerated people.

This is a useful overview of the challenges faced by asylum seekers, inland refugee claimants, in the Canadian context. This was a document prepared by OCASI in 2015.

Queer Kanyen’kehá:ka author and educator Marie Laing spoke with 10 young trans, queer and two-spirit Indigenous people in Toronto in fall 2017, as part of the research for her Master’s thesis. They had conversations about how they use the term two-spirit, how it’s related to other words they use to describe their genders, sexualities, and ways of being in the world, and the brilliance of their communities. Laing made her thesis into a zine to be accessible to the community members. 

This guide is prepared by ACAS - Asian Community AIDS Services and is written with East and South East Asian cis women, trans women and non-binary newcomers in mind. It is intended to help better understand dating culture in Canada, slang, consent, and sexual health. 

This is the complete list of terms and definitions used in the OCASI Positive Spaces training modules.
 

Abstract

The settlement services sector in Toronto, Canada, has faced difficulties in responding to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) immigrant youth in ways that respect their specific experiences. One way agencies have taken up this challenge in Toronto has been to develop LGBTQ-specific settlement services. Housed within a diverse range of organisations, these services are intended to engage and support LGBTQ immigrant youth. In this article, we report on evaluation research conducted with LGBTQ immigrant young people from Griffin Centre’s reachOUT Newcomer Network where we asked about their experiences accessing settlement services in Toronto. Our findings suggest that LGBTQ immigrant youth are deeply influenced by intersecting identities linked to racialization, sexuality, gender identity, education, employment, and immigration status. Participants expressed overwhelming interest in accessing support, but remain disconnected from settlement services. A reconceptualization of LGBTQ settlement services within a framework of hybridity that challenges essentialism and neo-colonialism would improve service delivery. This shift would allow for more integrated settlement services that acknowledge LGBTQ newcomer youth and their experiences of (un)belonging.

Creating Awareness and Understanding of the Transgender Community is an educational video created by the Greater Sudbury Police Service in partnership with TG Inner selves. Lesson plan, PowerPoint, and speaker's notes also available. 

Note: This video uses the term "sexual identity" to refer to "sex." In other contexts, the term "sexual identity" is often used to mean "sexual orientation."