About Us
Founded in 2017 by advocate Verniss McFarland, The Mahogany Project aims to reduce social isolation, stigma, and violence that our most marginalized communities often face daily. A pillar of our work- creating safe spaces for transgender and queer communities of color in Houston, Texas- has allowed our work to impact the lives of trans communities in our local city, and across the United States.
The only Black trans-led/peer led community center in the state of Texas, The Mahogany Project provides supportive services, ranging from emergency housing resource navigation, food pantry, clothing closet, and case management support. In addition, we provide recreational and arts activities- from our media center/recording studio to painting classes to community celebrations- all with the aim of providing empowerment and safety for communities who have nowhere else to turn to for peer-led support. We believe that everyone deserves access to economic stability, dignified housing, quality healthcare, resources, community, and opportunities for healing. We provide and connect the most marginalized to programs that help individuals and communities thrive.
Building strong communities
In the midst of growing transphobia, anti-blackness, and anti-trans rhetoric in Texas and the South- The Mahogany Project partners with advocacy groups and organizations in the fight to eradicate stigma against our community, and lead organizing and advocate for the equal rights and protections of our transgender/non-binary and queer communities in the South.
We believe that everyone deserves access to economic stability, dignified housing, quality healthcare, resources, community, and opportunities for healing. We provide and connect the most marginalized to programs that help individuals and communities thrive.
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The Mahogany Project was created to center and support the transgender, non-binary and gender non conforming communities in Houston, Texas. Today, The Mahogany Project is proud to support our trans communities and our broader LGBT community in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area and the Southern United States.
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The Mahogany Project Community Center provides real-time support for trans and queer people in need. Our peer-led model means we hire and train staff from our local community to be super-heroes and support our people with getting the things they need to survive the night- be it a bus ticket to get home or emergency housing support or gender affirming clothing and hygiene supplies. We know the unique needs our most impacted folks are facing day to day, which allows us to minimize the barriers that often plague social services and ensure our community members get support in real-time.
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Our Board of Directors
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Crystal Townsend (she/her) is a native of Beaumont, TX, who elevates the experiences of Black, Latinx, and TGLBQ+ communities. She amplifies the intersectional nature of our lives through joy, organizing, and supporting narrative power, which shapes the norms and rules by which our society lives. In this work, she feels we can honor our humanity and serve as a reminder that we live full, beautiful, complex lives, not single-issue ones.
Crystal has a background in public health and draws from her experience in community, issue-based, digital, and electoral organizing. For more than a decade, Crystal has worked to intentionally and systematically support and grow a culture of inclusion, accountability, and anti-racist organizing leadership, especially within the local HIV response. In 2019, Crystal had the privilege of working alongside the fierce leaders of the Positive Women's Network Greater Houston Area to co-create H-Town Power - the successful electoral organizing campaign that helped educate and mobilize over 150,000 unlikely voters in the historic 2020 Harris County election. Crystal is an inaugural graduate of the ReCollective's Ukombozi Fellowship and lives with her family in Houston, TX.
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Atlantis Narcisse is the Director of Programs with the Transgender Education Network of Texas. She is also the Founder and CEO of Save Our Sisters United (S.O.S.U). Additionally, Atlantis has worked with historical institutions in Houston like the Montrose Center, Legacy Community Health and the City of Houston bridging the gap between community and needed services since the early 1990s. During the early years of the HIV epidemic, mother Atlantis was known for organizing accessible and stigma free HIV/STD testing whether it was from her living room to partnering with local clinics.
Narcisse began this journey decades ago as a housemother who held space for people who needed a comfortable, judgment-free environment for medical aid. This "house" Atlantis birthed, was created to close the familial gap that many members of the LGBTQ+ community experience with respect to their birth or legal families and is lovingly called House of Capri (HOX). HOX is a home that has been chosen to routinely guide hundreds of Black LGBTQ+ community members along the paths of self-care, self-empowerment, and self-worth.
When Atlantis founded Save Our Sisters United, Inc. (SOSU) in 2017 and, three years later, Save Our Sons & Brothers, she made sure both groups provide trans people with safe spaces to connect and find needed trans-friendly services. SOSU is a space where people of trans experience can share stigma-free stories, shed any shame, and see individual strength. The group launched a COVID relief fund that distributed over $150,000 to help trans communities during the pandemic and Winter Storm Uri. Narcisse is excited to launch a new project at SOSU called Affirming Lives Initiative, which will help trans people cover the costs of correcting their names and gender markers on government documents.
As a native Houstonian, she has been engaging her local and national Black LGBTQ+ community as an advisor, mentor, and a consultant for more than 20 years. She speaks to educators, students, and professional organizations about life’s journey as a transgender woman of color with the intent to destroy the barriers of stigma transgender women encounter. Atlantis obtained her Bachelor of the Arts – Sociology, with a minor in Health Studies, from Texas Southern University. As a mentor, Atlantis’ goal is to stand in solidarity by holistically empowering and mobilizing transgender women of color, and the communities they live in, to confront issues in society.
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Andrew hails from Boston, MA and currently resides in Philadelphia, PA with his two cats, Angus and Bingo. He graduated in 2016 from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in Women's and Gender Studies, and has spent his entire career working to advance LGBTQIA equity. He first campaigned with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition to secure public accommodations protections for transgender and gender non-conforming people in Massachusetts. For the following four and a half years, he worked in public health. He was responsible for smoothly implementing and maintaining several research studies at The Fenway Institute, all pertaining to HIV prevention and improving health disparities among transgender and gender non-confirming individuals. As a transgender man himself, Andrew is passionate about serving his community within a framework of justice and community-centeredness. These values led him to his current role as a Movement, Issue, and Charitable Organizations Associate at ActBlue. In this position, Andrew oversees the onboarding processes of all LGBTQIA-serving organizations to the ActBlue platform, manages their accounts, and assists with their fundraising efforts. Having previously lived in Houston, uplifting the work of The Mahogany Project and serving on its Board is particularly fulfilling for Andrew. Some of his non-work interests include fitness, vintage shopping, and perfecting his latte art.