GLO Center grant to serve LGBTQ+ people in 20-county area

Aaron Kitchens: Grant will help tackle loneliness crisis among LGBTQ+ people.

The GLO Center closed out Pride month with a June 30 announcement of a grant to provide community-building services across a 20-county footprint.

Aaron Kitchens, executive director of The GLO Center, said he learned earlier in June of a $483,238 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health to strengthen LGBTQ+ community connection, to develop local leadership and to support grassroots efforts across rural southwest Missouri.

The GLO Center’s website states it serves the LGBTQ+ community in the Ozarks through support, resources, education and advocacy to create a more inclusive and welcoming community where all can thrive.

In an interview, Kitchens said the grant will allow The GLO Center to help people who are looking for support in starting organizations or events in areas that may lack resources, and where members of the LGBTQ+ community may not feel the safety and comfort they need to seek resources.

“Our goal is to empower those folks who are already in these communities doing that work,” he said. “It will look like us propping up and supporting grassroots efforts that are already existing or inspired by work happening in other communities.”

He offered the example of the community of West Plains Pride. The grant can be used to help figure out what the needs are in that city’s LGBTQ+ community.

“We want to reach more queer individuals and families,” Kitchens said.

And West Plains is just one community in the 20-county area, where every community is different, according to Kitchens.

He said the grant will be used to perform a regional needs assessment with partners that have already been identified and others that arise. Work is happening throughout the region, Kitchens said, though he added that establishing a network throughout the entire 20-county area will not happen all at once.

“We’re really focused on belonging – making sure that folks feel like they belong in their home community or hometown,” he said. “The inverse of that is isolation.”

LGBTQ+ and business
Kitchens said there is a business case to be made for supporting the needs of members of the LGBTQ+ community.

He noted that businesses that support Pride and other initiatives can benefit from signaling that they are inclusive and welcoming to everyone who lives in their community.

“The queer individual is a very discerning customer – we always have been,” he said. “We put our dollars into institutions that support our right to exist equally and visibly, and that will continue to be the case.”

He added that members of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly those who are out, may find it more difficult to locate employment opportunities in their area, and that’s true whether they live in a small town like Diggins or in the urban center of Springfield.

“There are jobs and employment opportunities that are unavailable to me as an out, loudly gay advocate in this community,” he said. “But there absolutely are employment opportunities that are available. When we have an inclusive employer that pays a livable wage and offers upward mobility, the community will hone in on that and push folks in that direction.”

He added that he hopes the grant will help The GLO Center to identify more opportunities and support workforce development for all of the communities in the region.

Inclusion and health
A 2025 article published in the international journal Behavioral Sciences found that feelings of loneliness are exacerbated among LGBTQ+ people, and social stigma causes mental health problems and stress, as well as increased social and economic vulnerability.

“Many folks feel isolated in their own communities,” Kitchens said. “They do not feel they can step outside their homes, be themselves and live authentically. That has very real, tangible impacts.”

Kitchens added that much attention has been paid to the loneliness epidemic, especially among men, the group focused on by the 2025 study.

Addressing isolation and creating belonging is part of why the goal of many community events is visibility, and it’s why members of the community gather each June for Pride, Kitchens said.

“We want to be visible so it’s easier for other folks like us to find us and have community,” he said. “We also want to show allies what we’re about and why we exist.”

Kitchens said that over the next three years, GLO will work to build a regional network of care and connection in the 20 counties surrounding Greene. They are Barry, Barton, Cedar, Christian, Dade, Dallas, Douglas, Howell, Jasper, Laclede, Lawrence, McDonald, Newton, Ozark, Polk, Stone, Taney, Texas, Webster and Wright.

Tiffany Phillips, a spokesperson with the Missouri Foundation for Health, said via email that the grant is provided through the foundation’s Community Care initiative with a focus on enhancing system collaboration for traditionally marginalized communities.

She added that no other grantees in the current cycle are located in the Springfield region.