COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Prism Community Collective planned to open Wednesday at 10 a.m.
The LGBTQ+ resource center was created by the Community Health Partnership as a direct response to the mass shooting at Club Q in November of 2022.
"I feel like Prism in my mind is a place to start for people that puts them in the driver's seat of what they want to do next, whether that's connecting with people colloquially or that's finding access to other resources, clinically or otherwise," site director Stoney Roberts said.
Each room in the Prism is named after one of the five people who lost their lives in the shooting. Those rooms focus on different aspects of the care Prism hopes to provide. That includes mental and physical health exams, gender-affirming clothing donations and common spaces to hang out.
The money for the center comes from federal Anti-Terrorism Emergency Assistance Funding.
"I tend to say it's like FEMA for mass violence events," said the senior manager of health equity for community health partnership Rachel Keener said. That amounts to a yearly grant of $1.7 million over the next three years, Keener said, with a plan for CHP to step in once funding expires.
"We are already having conversations about how we can sustain this, what's really needed, how do we make sure we're not putting something in front of the community and then just taking it away in a few years," Keener continued.
Ashtin Gamblin said moving to Colorado Springs from Illinois was a difficult thing to do, but the community she found at Club Q made it easier.
"That sense of belonging, and actually feeling like you belong in a community is something different. It is really life-changing to have that," she told me.
However, she said that changed the night of the Club Q mass shooting, leaving her shot nine times.
"Watching everything unfold, we became divided, we were very broken, and there's not really the same space we have to hang out," Gamblin continued.
Now, she works as a mass violence peer supported. She thinks Prism is just what this community needs.
"I've lost a lot of friends to suicide. And locations like Prism, that's what's going to get the community through. It's going to provide the resources and that belonging they need to continue on," Gablin said.
