About the Brooklyn YAS Coalition

The Brooklyn YAS (Youth Against Substance Misuse) Coalition is committed to creating community-level change to prevent substance misuse in LGBTQ+ youth in Brooklyn, specifically in the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Flatbush, and East Flatbush. We are a coalition of organizations, agencies, businesses, parents, and LGBTQ+ youth that works to support LGBTQ+ youth. We seek to promote safe, affirming spaces; instill physical and psychological safety; reduce family conflict and rejection; and increase community attachment for LGBTQ+ youth by applying environmental prevention strategies. 

We are currently organizing an art contest for LGBTQ+ youth where young queer photographers, artists, and painters can win a multitude of prizes including: A mentorship with transmedia artist Dominika Ksel, Public exhibition at the Brooklyn Pride Community Center, and up to $200.

The top awarded artist will be mentored by Dominika Ksel, a transmedia artist investigating unseen forces that inform our physical and immaterial realities. Through community collaboration, sonic sculptures, MR/VR/AR and video, Ksel uses gameplay and interactivity to map power dynamics, research consciousness, embodied cognition and interspecies collaboration. These experiential works draw on speculative fictions, techn0fem1n1sm, erased histories and invisible landscapes investigating how technology and mysticism mediate the perception of self and our interconnected ecologies. For more information, contact Jay Fields at jay.lee.fields@gmail.com

We are also accepting interns on an ongoing basis – if you are interested in public health, LGBTQ+ issues, and/or harm reduction, contact elisek@camba.org.