About Project Acorn

Project Acorn is a radical community-building space for LGBTQ youth and youth from LGBTQ families, aged 16-24, who are interested in being engaged in their communities. For four days, Project Acorn brings together youth and their allies and creates a safe, empowering, and liberating space, where people can share knowledge, make connections, and build bridges. The retreat is a mixture of workshops, speakers, typical camp activities, and magic that come together to create the most mind-opening and mind-blowing retreat possible. We want to create space to challenge the ways we think about gender and sexuality, and we want to be at the front of this movement!

Project Acorn is a program of the Ten Oaks Project. It was put together by the program’s first ever Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) in 2009, and continues to be led by a YAC who work relentlessly during the year to put together a program for youth that actually reflects what we want.  The YAC works from an anti-oppressive and sex-positive framework, believing that the space we create should be equally freeing for everyone in our communities.

Our Project Acorn 2011 theme was - We Are Here ! ? *#

We want to explore all the different things that "here" means to all of us, to understand all the differences between us and also celebrate all the incredible and meaningful ways that our lives intersect. And we want you to be a part of this.  

We are here!

We are unapologetic and we want to proudly step forward in the space we are in. We are confidently young and from LGBTQ communities and we want to assert the importance of our skills and experiences. And we want to do all that while having fun!

We are here*

*but we are not the first people to be here, and we acknowledge that this land has a history and a context. We understand that we live in community, and we recognize that so much of our identity, power, and privilege is stolen or borrowed or built upon the hurt of others.

We are here?

we're not always sure where here is. But we're on a journey to figure out where we are, where we've come from, and where we are going. We are open to questions and honestly searching for what's next for us and our communities.

#We are here

We are trending. We are part of radical communities that are sharing our stories, finding our commonalities, and organizing for a better future.

Our Supporters