SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Two years after the killing of the transgender teenager born Edward Araujo made national headlines, gay, lesbian and transgender groups in the San Francisco Bay area are reaching out to young people in hopes of teaching tolerance and acceptance.

The Santa Cruz County Task Force for Lesbian, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders is one of several Bay Area groups working to create an atmosphere of greater tolerance in their communities. Monday, Oct. 4, marked the second anniversary of Araujo’s death, and October is recognized nationally as Queer History Month.

Stuart Rosenstein, chair of the Santa Cruz County task force, said the often cruel forms of bullying and harassment begin in grade school, and misplaced anger is often tagged with derogatory terms related to gender issues.

One way to confront the issues head on is to get back in the schools and talk about them. Rosenstein’s task force does just that, working directly with school administrators to help quell climates of harassment before they take hold.

“K through 12 student education is very important [regarding] sexual orientation and gender identity,” Rosenstein told The Associated Press, “so that LGBT young people are integrated within the fabric of our communities and not singled out for harassment and ridicule.”

Ridicule quickly turned to anger, and then murder, on Oct. 4, 2002, when Araujo, known to her family and friends as Gwen, was beaten and strangled after her biological identity was revealed in a late-night confrontation at a party in Newark.

According to testimony at the preliminary hearing for the men accused in the killing, Araujo was slapped, choked, beaten with a skillet, tied up and strangled in an attack that lasted about two hours. The trial of the three men accused in Araujo’s killing ended in a mistrial.

Jorge Bru, 29, of Santa Cruz, was born male but identifies as a transgender youth. Bru, who endured his childhood with the usual gender-prodding taunts, now coordinates monthly youth discussion forums in Santa Cruz to make sure others understand the impact of those actions.

For all the college town’s liberal leanings, “there’s still lots of education that needs to be done,” Bru said. “There’s still a lot of pockets of communities that are not informed and there’s still harassment and there’s still violence.”

In the Oct. 3 edition of the Oakland Tribune, a large notice in memory of Araujo’s death played prominently across an inside page. It read, in part, “Another year fades away, and the pain has yet to subside, we grasp on to your sweet memory, an inspiration that is very much alive.”