The Colin Higgins Youth Courage Awards are given each year to acknowledge remarkable gay, bisexual, or transgender youth who demonstrate amazing courage in the face of intolerance and bigotry. In their sixth year, the Colin Higgins Foundation aimed to raise national and regional visibility of the Awards Ceremony at New York's Pride Week. The Foundation also hoped to draw major attention to the three recipients, who would be trained to stay "on-message" during the interviews. And the Foundation hoped to bolster the prestige of the awards and inspire a larger pool of applicants to complete in the future.