Having sat down with a couple other people and started a curation group, I have some advice for you.
If you're curating, share the posts with others who follow you. Your votes won't be worth much until others see your account as something of value. If you can't upvote, be a signal booster. Resteeming quality content can be a fantastic path, especially in niche interests.
Your transparency reports are a big deal. They go a long way to help with the legitimacy you desire.
Don't be afraid to power up. Look to donors/benefactors to help you build up your voting power. There is nothing wrong with asking for a delegation from your followers to help bring value. Especially with the transparency report mentioned above.
You have a great niche, good motivation to do so, and you're in an area with not a whole lot of options. You really need to aggressively seek out content creators to partner with. Your motives are noble, but you're working with a very specific subset. It's worth seeking out others and help build them up. They'll be more than willing to return the favor.
Sharing isn't exactly easy when I lack the time or motivation to sort them out. INstead, I relied on selecting those I consider worthy for curation, and let the rest do by the autovoter. Not the best, I know.
Meh, you're right maybe. It's just that Steem is transparent on its own already. After some time, I felt being redundant on data that's already available.
I'd be fine with delegation but it's hard to find a "donor" if you will, and like 1), it needs some effort that I can't really affort at the moment.
Since I'm a curator, my primary aim is to help, not to "enforce" my goals. Especially because sadly there are topics I'm nitpicky about (e.g. I'm supporting exclusively heterosexual content) and I don't want other to feel discriminated. I'd also have less freedom of choice if I rely on others.
Thanks for your lengthy answer anyway, it's generous to spend this effort on me, when I can't promise that I'll do the same.