Since Scot Tatelman and his wife, Jacq, founded STATE Bags in 2013, they’ve been helping those in need through the company’s one-for-one #GiveBackPack program: For every bag sold, STATE donates a backpack stocked with necessities to an underprivileged child. But they didn’t want to stop there. “From the very get-go, we’ve always said we didn’t want to be just another one-for-one company that just donated stuff,” Tatelman tells Teen Vogue. “[We also want to focus on] shedding light and sharing stories of embattled populations and communities who are really struggling, and finding ways to use our growing platform to spread those stories around.”

This past October, Tatelman did just that when he launched a project on the company’s blog, #WhatDoWeTellTheKids. In the midst of the growing Black Lives Matter movement, he couldn’t help but wonder how it was affecting kids, particularly those in communities facing police brutality. He interviewed teachers and child development specialists who work with kids in embattled communities, and shared their stories and thoughts regarding how to properly communicate to kids about the Black Lives Matter movement.

After sharing that project, Tatelman knew he wanted to do more, like focus on other important topics and address other marginalized groups, like the LGBTQ community. “I had an uncle who passed away of AIDS when I was 13,” Tatelman says. “He was often discriminated against and called names, and it always hit me in a very visceral way when when [negative] language was being used toward...the LGBTQ community in such a [harmful] way.”

Though Tatelman has been aware of and affected by negative treatment of the LGBTQ community since he was young, his feelings intensified after Donald Trump was elected President. “We circled up as a team the day after the election — we have [some members] of our team who are in the LGBTQ community, and there was a very real fear [regarding] what was happening with derogatory words and the spewing of hate and the freedom to just call people names,” Tatelman says. “The door had just sprung open. It was kind of a slow-moving process during the election, seeing that type of thing happening more and more at rallies and those types of things; but when [Trump] was elected, it…[felt] like this blanket statement [saying], ‘This is okay’ to the world.”

So, Tatelman decided to feature proud members of the LGBTQ community in New York (where his uncle lived) for his second installment of #WhatDoWeTellTheKids, shedding light on harmful effects language can have on people. In putting together this project, Tatelman spoke with more than 10 role models, including Saturday Night Live co-head writer, Chris Kelly, Vanity Fair editor Michael Carl, and Director of Life Skills at The Ali Forney Center, Stacey Lewis. They shared stories of their own experiences and struggles, as well as what they want LGBTQ youth to know.

“There are so many kids right now who are struggling with their identity and figuring out how to navigate this process of coming out of the closet, and figuring out who they are, and they’re terrified,” Tatelman says. “The whole angle comes back to, ‘What do we tell the kids?’ and I hope that by sharing these stories, kids will read it...and say, ‘[If] they were able to push through, I can too.’” Tatelman is sharing the interviews on the STATE Bags blog, as well as on the company’s Instagram page.

STATE Bags will be adding new Instagram posts through this Thursday; after which these stories will live on while Tatelman and his team work on more installments of #WhatDoWeTellTheKids. Next up, they’ll feature stories of people who are developmentally disabled and the struggles they’ve faced. The company plans to make this an ongoing initiative, documenting and sharing stories from different people in different communities throughout the year. “We are nothing as a business if we can’t use our voice to shed light and to stop discrimination in such a real way,” Tatelman says.

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