Kim Watson is a 52-year-old trans woman living in the Bronx with her husband and adopted daughter. She is cofounder of an organization called Community Kinship Life (CKLife), which provides space for transgender individuals to gather and offers scholarships. Her work has been honored by Bronx elected officials and citywide LGBT groups.

She arrived in the United States on a tourist visa in 1988. When the pass expired, she remained.

The city offered her refuge from persecution she faced over her identity in her homeland, but she continued to struggle with mental illness and substance abuse.

While homeless, she was twice arrested for selling controlled substances in 1997 and 1998. Nazrali said that at the time she was going through a wrenching identity dysphoria that led to the run-ins with the law.

However, more than a decade ago, Watson said she went to rehab and started receiving counseling for PTSD and her other identity issues.

Watson earned a bachelor's degree from Pace University and began grassroots organizing over LGBT issues and HIV status.

A consortium of philanthropic foundations has pledged to contribute $20 million to transgender charities across the US and the world over the next five years in order to

In their press release the foundations point out that

Globally, more than 1,700 transgender murders have been reported in the past seven years alone and many cases have involved extreme violence and torture

In the United States, transgender people are twice as likely as other Americans to earn $10,000 a year or less

In the United States, 20% of transgender people have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives.

Vanessa Baird, co-editor of the New Internationalist. has created a video intended to promote that magazine's October issue. I decided to bogart it for my own purposes, because the video provides a fairly good summary of where the transgender community stands at this particular time.