Trans-Wa (The Transgender Health and Wellness Center of Washington) is a nonprofit that serves Trans, Two-Spirit, 3rd Gender, Intersex, Nonbinary, Agender, Gender Fluid, and all gender-expansive people across Washington State. 

**Note! Below, we use “TGE” to succinctly refer to trans and all gender-expansive people.**

Mission Statement:

We are a trans-led organization that advances health equity and justice for gender-expansive people across Washington State by eliminating barriers to self-determination, building gender-expansive community and capacity, and driving institutional and systemic change.

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Aspiration Statement:

We seek a future of mutual liberation where the infinite spectrum of gender is universally celebrated, especially for gender-expansive and historically marginalized individuals.

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Organizational Culture & Structure: 

We are a worker self-directed nonprofit, where staff have a high level of influence, including representation on our Board of Directors. Practicum-based staff (you!) are treated like staff and engaged in decision-making, strategy, governance, and organizational development, as interested.

We approach our work through the lenses of equity, inclusion, access/ibility, and justice, and are working to cultivate explicitly anti-cissexist, anti-colonialist, antiracist, anti-ableist, and systemically anti-oppressive programs, policies, and practices. This includes a commitment to anti-hierarchy, shared power, and collaborative supervision.

We are entering our 3rd year of operations and are actively developing our policies, programs, and change strategy, as well as developing our board. Practicum students have a high level of influence at the foundational level of our organizational development.

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Practicum Structure

Trans-Wa has over 30 focus areas available for practicum students to engage in. Because of the breadth of opportunities, it is very common for our students to work across multiple areas. To help students balance developing skills in both depth and breadth, we suggest the following structure:

• 50% of your hours will generally go to your “primary focus area,” which is aligned with the position you’re applying for
• About 10% of your hours goes toward administrative tasks and self-care (we reserve 30-60 minutes per week in our schedules for self-directed self-care)
• The remainder of your hours are “self-designed,” meaning we will help you select programs and projects that align with your interests, desired skills, and career goals

A note about specializations: We offer opportunities across the three areas of social work practice (micro, mezzo, and macro). Students may opt to narrow their focus, but because of the breadth of opportunities at Trans-Wa, it’s easy to get experience working across all levels of practice.

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Schedules

Tuesdays are our most full days as far as meetings, followed by Mondays. Generally, practicum students have pretty full Tuesdays, but it depends on the programs/projects you’re engaged with. Beyond required meetings, students are welcome to design their own schedules.

Opportunity to voice and incorporate own lived experience, expertise, and interests into work to influence organizational programs, policies, and environment.

All Clinical students engage in the following activities:
--- Individual supervision is bi-weekly; group supervision is weekly (Clinical Consult Group); option to learn through case scenarios, case consultations, role plays, scripted role plays, peer skillsharing, observation, and more!
--- Actively engage in the creation of a culture of humility, respect, anti-coercion, and prioritizing/validating lived experience as expertise

Additional activity **OPTIONS** include:
--- Gender-Affirming Letter (GAL) writing: shadow GAL sessions and (if interested, under supervision), work toward conducting sessions yourself with trans/gender-expansive folks in need of psychosocial assessments for GALs. Psychosocial assessments along with gender affirming letters are needed for insurance companies to cover surgical gender-affirming care.
--- Provide short-term case management to Trans-Wa clients (primarily focused on supporting folks with accessing gender-affirming care and the spectrum of transition, including both social and medical transition, as well as accessing basic needs, coming out, navigating vital documents changes, etc.)
--- Medical Social Work: Support Medi Gender-Affirming Hair Removal (GAHR) clients, as we test this new program and prepare to open our first GAHR clinic
--- Engaging schools, teachers, and school districts in exploring support for high school (and possibly middle school) students
--- Engaging community partners, community members, and other organizations in community dialogues (bridging!) related to trans justice, trans rights, and gender-affirming care access
--- Resource navigation: Coordinate incoming referral requests by directing individuals, providers, and others to appropriate resources, providers, and organizations; assist users with navigation of our Washington state-wide Gender-Affirming Care and Services (GACS) Directory (currently an internal resources, but will be publicly launching during the 2025-26 academic year)
--- Support clients with insurance navigation
--- Conduct provider outreach and support for GACS Directory
--- Conduct Name/ID/Gender Marker Change appointments, supporting clients with updating their vital documents
--- Support the implementation of a Youth Advisory Board, including youth outreach, recruitment, and engagement
--- Co-facilitate therapeutic and/or peer support groups; our current groups include: TGE People with Chronic Illness, Social and Political Stress Support, and Gender Journeys
--- Co-facilitate community, social, and other groups, such as our “Beyond the Binds” TGE Book Club, a Trans and Nonbinary Writers’ Group, a TGE-related Research Journal Club, and other groups pending intern and participant interest
--- Support the implementation of our new short-term therapy program; opportunity to provide short-term therapy to clients if interested
--- Conduct outreach to build partnerships with communities, community organizations, nonprofits, and businesses to mutually support each others’ programs, clients/participants, staff, and goals
--- Other duties as **mutually** agreed upon in a non-pressuring/non-coercive way

Additional mezzo and macro-level opportunities are also available for interested students. Working with a newer nonprofit, students will have significant influence over organizational direction, programs, and partnerships.

All staff engage in the following:
--- Attend weekly staff meetings and co-working times

Additional activity **OPTIONS** include:
--- Support Direct Services coordination, including working on DS infrastructure-building, client coordination, and provider coordination
--- Help organize and run monthly Name/ID/Gender Marker Change Clinics
--- Help plan and coordinate our new Medi GAHR program
--- Co-lead our new Insurance Navigation project (internal resource for staff case managers and resource navigators); support insurance contracting processes; explore options for making gender-affirming insurance navigation project shareable with referral partners and/or publicly
--- Help coordinate Trans-Wa’s outreach and partnerships planning and implementation
--- Help design a new support group
— Work with fellow staff to develop a new short-term therapy pathway
--- Work with a collaborative team to develop external trainings (trainings we provide to other orgs and professionals) on complex cases for GAL, gender-affirming care generally, trans competence, trauma-informed care, etc.
--- Work with a collaborative team to develop internal trainings (trainings we provide to volunteers, staff, contractors, group facilitators, etc.) on building safety in therapeutic and community groups, gender-affirming care resource navigation, name/ID changes in Washington state, and other topics as needed and/or as aligned with student interests
--- Work collaboratively with other staff to create and engage digital community, through platforms such as a Discord Community Server
--- Actively engage in implementation of AEDI (accessibility, equity, diversity, inclusion) and anti-oppression work, both within the organization and through our public-facing communications and programs
--- Support development of important organizational documents and processes related to direct services and health/mental health programs
--- Attend training sessions and professional development opportunities offered, as interested

Other related areas that students can choose to engage in include:
--- Gain board and leadership experience by serving as an interim member of the board of directors, if interested
--- Support exciting events, such as our Trans Day of Celebration (a community-building event, focused on expression and identity-based arts/crafts) and Open Closet (a clothing and basic needs exchange)
--- Support our Trans-Wa Lending Library
--- Support our Digital Gender Resource Hub
--- Write original research and/or personal pieces, including digital publication across multiple platforms (public facing platforms, not academic journals)
--- Assist with grant scoping, writing, and editing
--- Assist with fundraising, including peer-to-peer fundraising, crowdfunding, and exploring methods of anti-capitalist fundraising, gift economics, and mutual aid

Please note, we have more Mezzo/Macro opportunities available (this listing is more focused on clinical). If mezzo/macro is more your vibe, check out our other listings! Thank you for considering!

Washington State work study is available. We are also working on setting up federal work study, but have not heard back from that program yet.

We also offer many paid training opportunities throughout the year. Examples of trainings from the 2024-25 academic year include: organizational trauma, data equity foundations, democratic governance, decolonizing research, neurodiversity and gender, and several gender-affirming-care-related topics. Students are also welcome to bring training ideas to the group for consideration!

Required:

-- Previous experience working with marginalized communities and/or individuals, especially LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and Disabled/neurodiverse communities (YES, lived experience is experience!!)
-- Passionate about gender diversity and trans justice, as well as intersecting identities, lived experiences, and issues
-- Deep and demonstrated commitment to gender-expansive people and communities, including people who are Trans, Two-Spirit, 3rd Gender, Intersex, Nonbinary, Agender, Gender Fluid, GNC, demi, gender-expansive, and/or not exclusively cisgender
-- Strong commitment and willingness to deepen learning about our shared values of anti-oppression (including antiracism and anti-ableism), accessibility, centering lived experience, self-determination, and mutual liberation
-- Ability to “speak to” (in a verbal or non-verbal sense) these commitments
-- Ability to identify own positionality (both privilege and marginalization) and engage with people across significant difference from a place of humility, respect, partnership, and empathy
-- Comfortable interacting with diverse groups of people via email, social media, Zoom, phone, and possibly in person
-- Commitment and follow-through to execute tasks—including potentially routine or mundane tasks—that are crucial for the implementation of projects and programs
-- Ability to self-organize and self-initiate, and/or willingness to work collaboratively with teammates to organize and plan tasks and workflow

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Preferred:

-- Previous experience working with Trans and Gender-Expansive individuals and TGE-related issues such as trans rights, gender justice, and/or gender-affirming care. (Again, lived experience is experience!!)

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Technological proficiencies:

Previous experience with these is *NOT required* but a general knowledge of these or related technologies would be helpful!
-- Google Workspace, including G-Drive and Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.
-- Zoom
-- Discord
-- Canva
– Any experience working with health records, project management software, and/or relationship management software

These platforms are new to almost all incoming staff, so we include full trainings for practicum students using these:
-- Monday.com (our project management software)
-- Nation Builder (our donor management, digital organizing, and communications software)
-- Sessions Health (our EHR)

English
Other language proficiencies are not required, but deeply appreciated!

Thinking about applying?
We would love to see you at one of our upcoming Trans-Wa Open Houses!
Please sign up here: https://wkf.ms/4bslFdv

Ready to Apply?
To apply, please complete and submit this form: https://wkf.ms/4cO6ACw

Questions or Issues?
If you have any issues with the application process or have any questions, please feel free to reach out by email to Serin, our Executive Director, at admin@transwa.org.