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Wanda Alston House for LGBT youth to launch foundation

Published

13 years ago

October 4, 2013

Mariah Cooper

Brian Watson at the Wanda Alston House. (Washington Blade file photo by Henry Linser)

The Wanda Alston House has helped support homeless LGBT youth throughout the last five years. Now, with Transgender Health Empowerment’s (THE) bankruptcy, the Alston House needs some support of its own.

The Wanda Alston Foundation formed in July to financially aid the Alston House in the wake of THE’s collapse. The foundation hosts its official launch reception and first fundraiser at MOVA Lounge (2204 14th St., N.W.) Tuesday from 5:30-8 p.m. The kick-off reception also celebrates the Alston House’s fifth year anniversary.

Christopher Dyer, gay news, Washington Blade

Christopher Dyer (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

“It’s a unique program and we’d love to have as much support as we can from the community about this,” says Christopher Dyer, president of the Wanda Alston Foundation. “We’re getting grants, we’re up and running and we’d love to have as much support, in terms of volunteers and financially, as we possibly can.”

At the Alston House’s inception, the Department of Health and Human Services provided funding for the shelter combined with help from THE’s services to aid homeless LGBT youth. After THE’s bankruptcy, Alston House needed additional funding. Former THE Director of Programming Brian Watson oversees the Alston House and sought funding through a sponsor. The foundation was formed to administer the grants needed to keep the program running as well as the program itself.

“It’s a good foundation to start because it’s sourcing money more directly to Wanda Alston. There was some fundraising effort but it’s complicated to describe fundraising to donors. Now the foundation is pretty clear,” Dyer says.

Alston House, named after Wanda Alston, a lesbian activist who was murdered in Washington in 2006, is a renovated multi-bedroom house located in the Deanwood neighborhood of Northeast’s seventh Ward. It opened after THE noticed an increase of LGBT youth at its drop-in center. The house has assisted about 50 people ages 16-24 over the last five years. Eight people now reside in the home, the maximum amount allowed at one time. It is the only program designed to provide services for homeless at-risk LGBT youth in the District.

The house is always full excluding when rooms are being cleaned for new residents. Residents are required to go to school or have a job while staying in the house. They are allowed to stay up to 18 months. Former residents have gone on to attend college, move into their own places or returned home to their families. The board’s secretary, Xion Lopez, is a former Wanda Alston House resident. She lived there for about 13 months from the end of 2011 until January of this year. She joined the board last month after being told it would be advantageous to have the perspective of a former resident and transgender person on the board.

Xion Lopez, HIPS, Queery, gay news, Washington Blade

Xion Lopez (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

“This is a service that is definitely needed,” Lopez, 22, says. “Homelessness continues to grow and these are our children out there suffering through this. They’re forced into all kinds of things from drugs to prostitution to even jail, just to survive. Some don’t mind going to jail because they see that as a safety net. But we’re here to help. Do what you need to do to get on the waiting list. That’s what we’re here for.”

A paid staff that includes a full-time executive director, program director and administrator coordinator controls the day-to-day activities. The house also has trained adult supervisors qualified to oversee the special needs of a homeless shelter. The board approves each staff member hired.

The board focuses primarily on the fiscal and government oversight of the organization. The nine members work together to determine policies such as which grants are important and feasible to apply for and which are not. Approximately 90 percent of their revenue comes from D.C. administrated grants.

Lopez says she had an overall great experience at the Alston House. Among her fellow residents, several have moved on to school, one is studying abroad, two others are out on their own with full-time jobs, another got married and had a child.

“We have lots of success stories,” she says.

Now living on her own in Hyattsville, Md., Lopez says there were occasionally tensions within the house, but a high emphasis was placed on working through tension.

“You put eight LGBT young people in a house together, of course it’s not going to be all rainbows everyday,” she says. “There were some hormones and attitudes that collided but for the most part we had good relationships with each other and things that needed to be worked out were brought to the forefront. We never closed out a week with things not being addressed.”

Funding from the city has been steady over the years. The organization’s budget is about $400,000 per year. It includes the $60,000 spent on renting the house per year. The fundraising efforts have just begun and start with the reception on Tuesday. Dyer admits that the board is still figuring out how to organize “an infrastructure for donor maintenance.”

Dyer’s support for Alston House and his collaboration with Watson began five years ago when he worked as an LGBT liaison for former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. Watson secured funding for the Alston House from the D.C. City Council while Dyer served under Fenty’s administration in 2007. He became president of the Wanda Alston House Foundation board during the foundation’s first meeting in August.

The board has already made strides as an organization as they recently moved their operation from inside the Alston House to an administrative office downtown. Eventually, the board would like to expand the program so more clients can find help.

“We’re so new our board is much more active as opposed to a board that meets once every two or three months and just writes checks,” Dyer says. “We’re more intimately involved in the strategic direction of the organization.”

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Celebrity News

Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam

Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon

Published

5 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Michael K. Lavers

Kylie Minogue with Madonna at the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam on Aug. 2, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Cejlon Studio)

AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.

The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.

“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.

Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.

Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”

(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”

Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kylie Minogue (@kylieminogue)

Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.

Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.

“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”

Theater

Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth

First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’

Published

14 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Reggie D. White (Photo by Ambe J. Williams)

Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.

A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.

White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”

Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.

“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”

WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?

REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.

BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?

WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.

I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.

These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.

Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.

BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?

WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.

I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].

BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?

WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.

BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?

WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.

Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.