Mozaic Ohio

It has been a while since Mozaic has written some updates to our work because we have kept ourselves busy. Needless to say we have made exciting developments since the new year began.

 We started the month off with an Institute-wide retreat, spending an afternoon bonding at the cat café and two full days at 7575 hashing out focus and processes for the Mozaic program in tandem with the Institute’s training and resources. The retreat was a resounding success for our team, as we were able to bond more closely, build greater trust with one another, and receive some clarity on what Mozaic is doing and ourselves and the rest of the Institute can mutually benefit one another.

 You can see some excellent pictures of our team at the cat café on our Mozaic Instagram page! Check us out at @mozaicohio. We try to post no less than 2x/week and are trying to gain a stronger following. Please do follow us and send our page elsewhere. Also on the front of social media, our Facebook and Tumblr are also active. If you are on either of these mediums, follow us there as well. We are still experimenting with our social media strategy in order to best meet our demographic, but we think we are off to a strong start.

 Additionally, we had some fantastic outreach and testing events in the past month. Our first outreach event—screenprinting, found art, and threads revisited—was a total hit, even after being postponed due to inclement weather. We had nearly 50 attendees at the height of the event, tons of clothing given away to queer youth for free, two tests in our demographic, some great camaraderie built between Mozaic and the community, and people loved the designs our staff member Sarah made! Here is another reason to follow our social medias: you will get updates of events we are hosting!

 As for testing, we have been getting significant traction at Kaleidoscope Youth Center, OCTOPUS (a trans support group; we go on the POC-specific nights), and GCMC. To give GCMC greater pull, our team is working on organizing a “trans resource Tuesday,” where trans folks can come in, talk to Mozaic team members, and get linked to resources such as hormones, food assistance, etc. This should be functional within the next month.

Join us TODAY - Tuesday, January 9th - at GCMC (889 E. Long St) for free and confidential HIV/STI testing offered all day. Stop in to talk with one of our staff members about trans specific Sexual Health, including information on transitioning, HIV, STIs, and more!

This week, Mozaic will be hosting a Screen Printing & Found Art Sculpture event this Saturday, January 13th from 1-4pm at Abnormal Allies (78 Parsons Ave). Free HIV and STI testing will be available for the community!