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Hey, um, my name is Caleb. I work for schools out, um, which is a subgroup of outer spaces. And today we're here, um, to just raise some money for our organisations. We have four subgroups under outer spaces. We have schools out, which is a queer youth group for, uh, queer and gender non conforming young people between the age of 12 and 18, we have transform, which is for, uh, trans and [00:00:30] gender non conforming. Uh, young people and the age gaps more, Uh, from about 16 to 30. And then we have naming New Zealand, which is a newer group which we put money together to help, uh, people update their identity documents. How easy is it, or how hard is it to get funding? Uh, from what I've found, it's it's been quite [00:01:00] difficult for us. We we really rely on donations. We, uh we have a couple of give a little pages, and we mostly rely on donations of people that already know about the groups, but and actually get our groups out there and get people to find out about us is quite difficult, Which is what makes it so hard to get funding is because people don't know about our groups so well, because we don't [00:01:30] have the money to do any advertising. So if you had all the money in the world, what kind of things would you be doing? Yeah, where do we start? Uh, I. I know one of my dreams is to have a outer spaces house where we have where we have, uh, rooms that, um our young people can come stay overnight if they need to. We have a kitchen. We have an office. We have a youth space that, uh, people can just come and drop in because [00:02:00] at the moment, uh, our office is based at Evolve in Wellington and we have, uh, our groups. How would that evolve? And then we have our other groups out in the heart valley, which we just, um, have at other businesses. So it'd be really great to have one place where everyone can come and feel safe. So I know that that's one of my dreams to have an Outer Spaces house. [00:02:30] Can you talk about some of the hardships? Because I'm I'm guessing, even just, um, getting transport to come to evolve must be an issue for some people. Yeah, well, we have. That's why we have, um, transform. Especially, like is only held at one place, and it's only fortnightly. So that's quite a trouble for a lot of people because they have to wait fortnightly to have that support schools out. We have two groups every week. We have one in the city and one in the hut, [00:03:00] which helps with the transport. Um, one of the biggest issues we have with the group is a lot of young people are being afraid to come to the groups because of because they're in high school, not being out to their parents. So coming along to the group can be very frightening if they can't tell their parents where they are. So that would probably be the hardest thing about our groups. So what role, then? [00:03:30] Does things like, um, social media and Internet have and and, um, at the moment, our social media is not too strong. We have, uh, Facebook groups that the facilitators can, uh, moderate and the young people can come on and ask questions and talk to each other and talk to the and the facilitators can moderate that space And then we also have our public pages that we can let everyone let everyone know what's what's happening. So but at the [00:04:00] moment, yeah, we don't have a lot of resources for media and advertising, and, um, creating a space safe space on the Internet for young people to come and talk outside of group. So this year is the 30th anniversary of homosexual law reform. And way back then there were, um it it seems like there was a limited language in terms of description describing kind of identity. But now there seems to be a whole range of words. Um, can you talk about the the change [00:04:30] in language? And you know what? What are people? What words are people using to describe themselves. Now, Uh, there are so many different just from the time from when I was at high school, which was I'm 24 now. So high school for me was seven years ago, and the change in language in just that short space of time is so, so big and the I don't know the words that we have now, [00:05:00] uh, people seem to the young people seem to be claiming a lot of words back that were used as insults back when I was at high school. So we have gay queer, um, found that lesbians not so well used anymore, But a lot of new terms are coming up like, uh, well, not they're not new terms, but people are just getting to know, [00:05:30] getting to know them better. So, you know, we have words like queer and gender neutral, pansexual asexuals. So many. Like I just off the top of my head. I can't even, like, list them all, but, yeah, there's people were just getting to claim a lot of words and give them their own definition and not letting other people define who they are, which is [00:06:00] really amazing. So what was it like going through high school seven or eight years ago? So So we're talking. What was that? 2010. 2008. 2008. I graduated 2009. Um, so that was seven years ago. Yeah, so I graduate. Graduated 2009. Going through high school for me personally was horrific. Uh, I went to an all girls faith based school, so that was very, very challenging for [00:06:30] however you identify, it's just quite a challenging environment. So, yeah, I can't really put it lightly. It was It was a horrific time. And, uh, I just tried to encourage the young people that I work with now to really speak up about how they feel in their environment and definitely get their voices heard so that they feel comfortable at school. So was there anything [00:07:00] like a queer strait alliance or any? Uh, no, def. Definitely not. Not at my school. Uh, there were There was schools out. I did, uh, schools out was around when I was at high school. I never went because I didn't have any queer friends or anything like that, so Yeah, but no, we definitely didn't have any Q SAS at our school. It was very frowned upon. And so here we are, seven years later, out in the park. Can you describe the day and what it feels like? [00:07:30] I just feel so warmhearted, Really. That's everything is just so running out of words, actually. I mean, you, you you don't need words to describe it. I mean, sometimes things don't have words to describe. Do they? Yeah. No, you're exactly right. Like, I think that's that's how I'm feeling today. I just feel extremely safe. Um, just extremely safe [00:08:00] and warmhearted with the amount of people that are here and supporting. Yeah, What? I plan because I have a.
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