the shanti l.i.f.e. program is helping you help those people. seven years ago, i had a needle full of math in my arm. today, i'm raising money for the community and paying taxes back into the system. this program got me back on my feet, made me a contributing member of society, and made your jobs a lot easier, so i am asking you to consider programs like this that help you do more with the limited resources that you have to a lot to the community. so i appreciate your time. i appreciate the decisions you have to make. they are very difficult. there are a lot of amazing organizations out here and some really heartbreaking stories. no matter how heartbreaking my story was, it is a story of victory because today, again, i am contributing back. it is because of the life program, because of the skills that i learned, and as evidenced by that, i am habit that i am doing my own fund-raiser. i will be hiking the john neary -- john muir trail in a couple of months. i could not have done that without the skills that i learned. consider it the circle of lif

there is an opportunity to say the program, the shanti l.i.f.e. program for people like myself and potentially many more people. please consider keeping us, keeping shanti going and servicing that project for san francisco. i thank you so much for the opportunity to be able to be here and share that with you. thank you. [applause] supervisor chu: thank you. >> hello, supervisors, and thank you. i am the executive director of the lavender youth recreation and informational center and facilitator for the community partnership for lgbtqt youth. 43% of middle school-age and 39% of middle school age transgendered you skip school due to a lack of safety, compared to 11% of their heterosexual counterparts. for high school, 18% of lgbtq youth and 15% of transgenic skit school due to lack of safety compared to 15% of their heterosexual counterparts peer over 1000 youth in san francisco so identified as lgbtq you. the services are on that -- and prepared to provide what they need to drive and in many cases, the institution itself is the barrier to safety and