Family Builders ‘Unsung Hero’ executive director Jill Jacobs flies the Pride flag at the Pink Torch Processional to Illuminate the Pink Triangle June 1, 2021.
Family Builders Was Honored as Part of the Pink Triangle Pride Event
(OAKLAND, CA) Family Builders by Adoption executive director Jill Jacobs helped carry the Pink Torch in the June 1 Pink Torch Procession for Illuminate The Pink Triangle. Sponsors named Jacobs as an ‘unsung hero’ of the LGBTQ community, one of 30+ torch bearers for the second annual Pink Torch Procession kickoff for Pride Month. The procession began in Oakland with Mayor Libby Schaaf, continued to Lake Merritt, crossed the Bay Bridge and culminated in the lighting of the Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks in San Francisco with Mayor London Breed.
Jacobs carried the torch for the LGBTQ youth that Family Builders supports through foster care and adoption, and for LGBTQ parents who create permanent families for children and youth who are in the foster care system.
“Our families are our heroes,” says Jacobs.
Adoptive parent Raymond McKenzie adds “Jill Jacobs is quick to refocus any attention back to the cause and to her team. Family Builders isn’t just an agency providing services to adoptive parents. It is a community of people committed to ensuring as many children as possible have the opportunity to have a family and find resources and a community to support them as they become adults.”
Key to Family Builders programs is the Youth Acceptance Project (YAP), designed to help support an overrepresented, vulnerable population in foster care: LGBTQ and gender expansive youth. An estimated 25-35% of children and youth in foster care nationwide identify as LGBTQ+. The Youth Acceptance Project goal is to help keep LGBTQ and gender expansive youth in their families, extended families and community.
Family Builders wishes a Happy Pride Month to all of its youth, families, supporters and partners.
