I’m Dandi’s queerplatonic partner and best friend, and I’m raising money to help him through the transition from graduate school into his first post-MSW job.

Dandi recently completed his Master of Social Work after years of school, internship, crisis work, administrative demands, and the unpaid work of caring for people and building community. He is now looking for sustainable work in this new field while recovering from that exhaustion. As a GNC trans man who is superfat and disabled, he is also navigating ongoing barriers and the need for gender-affirming care.

We’re hoping to give him about two and a half months of breathing room while he gets his feet under him.

His basic expenses are about $2,300 a month, including $1,345 for rent and garbage, utilities, phone and internet, car insurance and gas, and roughly $400 for food and household necessities. He also has some outstanding bills and basic car maintenance that needs attention.

Dandi gives a great deal of care to every community he touches. He shares his music in service of collective and individual healing, brings people together through heart circles and other community spaces, and continually shows up for the people around him.

I think everyone deserves housing, food, healthcare, rest, and safety. It’s truly saddening that these needs so often get met through crowdfunding driven by who is seen as more deserving. I’m not telling you about about how much of his life Dandi has spent giving to his communities because his care makes him more deserving, but because I want you to know the person I know, and because the exhaustion of graduate school and the precarity of this transition have put that person at risk.

Right now, he needs some of that care to flow back toward him.

If we can raise a little more than breathing room, maybe we can also get Dandi’s big, booming laugh back in circulation around Portland, making people smile wherever it carries.

If you can, please donate today. Any amount will help keep Dandi housed, fed, and stable while he finds sustainable work. If you can’t donate, please share this fundraiser with people who may be able to help.

@dandi-DeBella on Venmo if you would prefer to donate there