As you may already know, Passion Impact provides community service opportunities to high school students, then encourages service-related personal reflection to inform their educational plans or chosen career paths. Involvement in community service is not only valuable for professional development, it also engenders empathy since many of our nonprofit partners serve vulnerable populations whose access to resources is limited. The institutional and interpersonal barriers that inhibit their access to resources are often shaped by historically entrenched social biases. Such social biases create division, ignorance, discrimination, and sometimes violence that may only be overcome through genuine connection and understanding. In these trying times of deep division, Passion Impact prizes connection. To illustrate our commitment to that principal value, Passion Impact''s Diversity & Inclusion Committee for Equity (DICE) presents our first Summer Speaker Series. Each weekly installment of the Summer Series focuses on a different social identity and amplifies the voices of marginalized communities whose perspectives are often ignored and whose needs are typically discounted. Free food will be available at each installment.  Students in attendance will receive credit towards Catalyst. Our second installment explores two related, crucial topics: Gender & Sexuality.

Speakers

 Anthony Hudson (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde): is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer, and filmmaker perhaps best known as Portland’s premier drag clown CARLA ROSSI, an immortal trickster whose attempts at realness almost always result in fantastic failure. Anthony & Carla host and program Queer Horror - the only exclusively LGBTQ horror screening series in the country - bimonthly at the historic Hollywood Theatre, where Anthony also serves as its Community Programmer. In 2018, Anthony was named a National Artist Fellow by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, a Native Launchpad artist by the Western Arts Alliance, and an Individual Artist Fellow by the Oregon Arts Commission in 2019. Anthony’s first evening-length show as Carla Rossi since 2014, Clown Down: Failed to Mount, will premiere at PNCA this November, and Anthony’s first professionally-produced theatrical play, Looking for Tiger Lily – commissioned by Artists Repertory Theatre – will make its world premiere in May 2020 with support from a 2018 Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights award. Find out more at TheCarlaRossi.com.