About

What is Muncie OUTreach?

Our Mission
Muncie OUTreach’s mission is to provide an accepting environment to enhance the personal growth of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth in the Delaware County area. We provide programming for LGBTQ youth, as well as advocate for community awareness and acceptance of young people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

How did Muncie OUTreach start?

Laura and her husband Jeff are Muncie natives who founded OUTreach in 2012.  They have one son, Matt, who came out as gay when he was twelve years old.  Laura drove her teenage son to IYG in Indianapolis every week to find a safe community for her son to feel welcome. She learned that many LGBTQ teens in Delaware county didn’t have support in the form of family or community. This led Laura to create a group locally.

Through her connections with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie, Laura learned of the OUTreach program in Ogden, Utah.  The administrators of their program sent her all their paperwork basically giving her a blueprint of how to run an LGBTQ support group.  She garnered the local support she needed to begin this group. Now, the group has its own home in the Muncie YWCA.

Since OUTreach began, Laura had fed many teens in need, answered phone calls in the middle of the night, sat by hospital beds, and found emergency lodging for kids in crisis.  In a sense, Laura has adopted her OUTreach kids and is like a mother to them all.

[soliloquy id=”745″]