Queer Youth and Homelessness
Bridget Hughes, M.A., has been HMI’s Director of Youth Services since June of 2012. Prior to joining HMI, Hughes spent eighteen years working at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Manhattan, where she developed and directed the Youth Enrichment Services (Y.E.S.) Program, an activities-based, leadership and prevention program for LGBT youth, and spearheaded the creation of the first free summer-camp program for LGBT youth in the country. Under Bridget’s direction, the Y.E.S. program received The Mental Hygiene Award from the City of New York in 2000 in recognition of service excellence and exceptional program performance, and was cited as a model substance abuse prevention program by the Division of Consumer Health Education of the University of Medicine & Dentistry; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Hughes served on the New York City Board of Education Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Intergroup Relations (1998-2004) and worked with the Office of Multicultural Education to develop the “E. Pluribus Unum” curriculum. She is also a co-author of the “Working It Out” intervention curriculum, a cognitive-behavioral HIV prevention intervention targeting lesbian, gay and bisexual youth, developed under the auspices of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University. Before leaving the Y.E.S. program and the Center, Hughes received a PASEsetter Award for outstanding contributions to the field of after school education. In 2007, she was awarded a Charles H. Revson Fellowship for the Future of the City of New York.