Desde un Corazón Trans

T4T Empowerment; Desde un Corazón Trans, was born from a trans woman’s love for her Trans, Gender Expansive (TGE) and migrant communities, who face specific forms of state-sanctioned violences due to these intersectional positionalities. However, through these challenges, our community rises, resists, and innovates new ways of being.

TRANSformative Storytelling

Our TRANSformative Storytelling program stems from our ED’s documentary La Perla Victoria; Desde un Corazón Trans (synopsis below). We are working on growing this offering for the trans movement and trans archives in order to fight against society’s control and erasure of trans and migrant narratives by uplifting self-told stories, instead of stories told by an exploitative third party. We also hope this will break down monolithic trans stories and instead expand people’s conceptions of transness, trans experience, trans liberation, etc, thus strengthening the larger public’s understanding of intersectional movement building.

La Perla Victoria; Desde un Corazón Trans Synopsis

La Perla Victoria: Desde un Corazón Trans is based on an intimate, trauma-informed, and community-rooted documentary approach. The film is guided by Victoria Castro’s own voice and presence, allowing her to narrate her story on her own terms, without anyone speaking for her. Rather than sensationalizing violence or suffering, the documentary focuses on dignity, autonomy, and emotional truth, creating space for complexity, contradiction, and transformation.

Visually and narratively, the film moves between memory and the present, between crossed borders, the ghosts of the past, and the slow process of healing. Through observational moments, personal reflections, and carefully contextualized archival and environmental footage, the film chronicles Victoria’s journey as a trans woman who survived transphobic violence, the criminalization of sex work, domestic abuse, and the particularly dehumanizing conditions faced by trans women in U.S. immigration detention centers. These systems are shown not as abstractions, but as forces that shape the body, the psyche, and relationships.

At its core, the documentary is an act of trans self-representation and trans-affirming care. It highlights Victoria’s resilience, her T4T relationship with her husband AJ, her reunion with her family, and her ever-evolving relationship with her own trans identity. By centering love, survival, and self-knowledge, alongside grief and loss, La Perla Victoria resists narratives that reduce trans migrants to mere victims. Instead, it offers a portrait of trans life that is tender, political, and profoundly human, rooted in the belief that telling our stories is itself a form of liberation.

T4T Leadership Program

Our T4T Leadership Program consists of multi-day workshops that empowers trans folks to take back their autonomy, heal from learned transphobic conceptions of self doubt, and gain tools to advocate alongside each other to dismantle the transphobic, racist, and xenophobic systems we face. We also aim to increase trans folks’ economic stability, and thus safety, through professional development workshops.

Last November we hosted our first T4T Leadership Cohort! We had 12 participants, all of whom expressed gratitude for the space and interest in staying connected and supporting future cohorts. We feel that the program was particularly impactful because of how quickly our T4T team and the participants were able to create a space of trust, allowing everyone involved to be vulnerable, lean on one another, and share room-filling laughs. These deep connections, which we feel are best fostered in intentional and smaller group spaces, are what create a stronger and more sustainable movement for the long fight ahead.

Additional T4T Workshops

As an extension of our T4T Leadership programming, we also offer one-time workshops, often requested by partner organizations for themselves and/or their participants. Some examples are:

Destigmatizing HIV/AIDS
PrEP/PEP 101
HIV 101
Gender and Sexuality Comprehension Trainings
Domestic Violence Prevention for Trans People
Unlearning Our Own Internalized Transphobia & Nurturing T4T Solidarity
Trans Migrant Resiliency
Violence Prevention for TLGBQI+ Sex Workers
How to Organize a Successful TLGBQI+ Event
Name and Gender Marker Change
Grant Searching & Writing for Small Trans-Led & Serving Organizations

The photos above and below are from a workshop given at Hope for TGNC Latinx’s weekly support group in NYC around the specific challenges that many trans Latina migrants face, including violence in detention centers, safer sex work, and domestic violence, as well as advocacy strategies in defense of trans rights.

T4T Community Advocacy

T4T Empowerment co-organizes and participates in local and national-level advocacy efforts, particularly focusing on trans liberation, migrant justice, and decriminalizing sex work.

All our struggles are interconnected! Trans liberation necessitates the end to US imperialism and the genocide of multiple oppressed groups including, but not limited to, Palestine, the Congo, and Sudan. Free them all!

HIV Prevention & Destigmatizing HIV/AIDS

At T4T Empowerment, we are dedicated to providing specialized training and workshops to address the diverse realities of HIV prevention. Through holistic approaches, we utilize a variety of educational methods to empower individuals and communities.

Notably, our ED and Founder, a transgender woman with over a decade of experience in HIV prevention, is a certified HIV rapid testing counselor with the San Francisco, California Department of Public Health. For her, raising awareness about prevention and working directly with communities based on their specific circumstances is paramount.

We also conduct educational workshops to eliminate the stigma surrounding people living with HIV. At T4T, we recognize that prevention methods are diverse and tailored to each individual; therefore, we provide the necessary tools, accurate information, and direct referrals to essential resources, ensuring that everyone can access the medications, education, and services they need.