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Hi. Um, I'm and I'm here with naming New Zealand and with transform here at the event. I'm here because we were invited to come. And I think this is a great event with a lot of really key people, both intergenerational and intercultural, and just getting everyone in the same room is really spark a lot of cool ideas. Tell me what? What is naming New Zealand, so naming New Zealand is a brand new organisation. Um, and the idea is that, uh, if you're a transgender gender queer [00:00:30] gender, non conforming into sex youth, it can be quite hard to update your identity documents, even though that is a huge step in your process of becoming who you are. So naming New Zealand is looking at fundraising and helping these youth update the documents. Why is it so hard? There's two main issues. One of them is the cost. If you're if you're a youth, it it can be quite difficult to raise 100 and $50 just out of nowhere. And the second is that, um, especially for trans youth, there are a lot of issues, particularly [00:01:00] with the, um, the medical, the medical system about how to about the requirements that you have to go through, and we're also working on hopefully getting those improved. So where did naming New Zealand come from? Uh, it was spawned over a coffee. Really? Uh, with, uh, amazing and Rosie from Community Law. And they wanted to do something small that would help the community in some way, and and it just sort of snoble from there. We've had fantastic response from the community. It fantastic. Just so much support. [00:01:30] So So what? What are you working on at the moment currently? Our next. We've just finished our first round of grant applications, so we had, uh, nine people apply, and, uh, two of them. Unfortunately, we're outside of Wellington, and we're focusing on Wellington at the moment. But the other ones we were able to fully fund with all the the donations that we raised from the last couple of months. So we're in the process of going through the first round of actually seeing what it's like to help people with their identity documents. Um, once you get to identity document change, [00:02:00] it feels like you actually are who you are. And all that time before that you're actually, it feels like you're you're pretending like you're living in this fake line. Once you have your identity sorted out, it just feels so powerful. You don't get mis gendered. You don't get misnamed. You don't have as much difficulty applying for jobs or at schools or uni or banks. Things like that. Um, it's incredibly important. And I I like to think that it's like you don't need to update your documents if you're, um if you're gay or lesbian. So why do you have to update your documents? If you're [00:02:30] Trans, you're also here with, uh, another group transform. Can you tell me about that? Yeah. Transform is a group that's been around for eight years. Um, and it's mostly been a support group that meets every two weeks for transgender youth. So 18 to 30 ish, um, and the main focus has been on support. So just getting everyone in the room and people just meet each other and realise that we're all just normal people, just with different sort of issues. Um, And over the last year, we've been looking at doing social events, or we've been doing shop trips, and we've [00:03:00] hired out Kilburn pool, which was really, really cool, Um, and doing social like coffees and going to the zoo, things like that. So how long have you been part of transform? I've been facilitating for about a year now, and I originally went to transform about three years ago, and it was just It was one of the best decisions that I made to actually just be around other people and realise I wasn't alone in this journey. So over that three or four year period, have you seen a change in the the kind of atmosphere? [00:03:30] I mean, I mean, uh, other issues from three years ago. The same issues that we have now are the world's getting better, like it's improving all the time that there's still a lot of issues like, um, we still have no actual support from the medical system. There's no department for trans people at the Wellington Hospital. Um, there's no support for gender queer non-binary people. Uh, but things are slowly improving slowly improving. Like nowadays people, especially with people like Caitlyn Jenner. People sort of know what [00:04:00] trends might be, whereas before it was this totally foreign concept we're coming into the, um, 30th anniversary of homosexual law reform. And I'm wondering, can you think I mean, how How far do you think we've come from? 1986 which seems a long, long time ago. Um, and and what are the kind of issues that we still have to kind of address in New Zealand? Well, I can only really speak mostly from my perspective, as a trans person and [00:04:30] as a gender queer person is that transgender people still are the most, um, discriminated against. It's still incredibly common for us to have jobs, uh, to be ridiculed again. Um, and I think like the trans community is where the gay community was 30 years ago, for example. So there's still a long way to go and and where do you start? I mean, what what what what are the what are the the the issues that that you kind of want to see addressed first? Well, 11 thing that immediately comes to mind is that gender identity still isn't [00:05:00] recognised as, uh, our rights in New Zealand, like your sexual identity, is is seen as a right, but not your gender identity. And a lot of people are like Well, that's OK. It's It's sort of the same thing, but it's not. If your gender identity is not male or female, then that should be protected, and more support from the medical system would be fantastic. So a lot of groups here are working towards improving the support for trans people. Gender, queer people. One of the things, uh, completely different from, uh, 30 years ago is is things like the Internet [00:05:30] and and the way we kind of connect to each other. Um, how do groups like transform? And in naming New Zealand, I mean, how do they connect to communities? Yeah, it's been a big focus since I've been involved over the last year. It transformed to get a lot of our stories online because it it might be easy for some of us to come along to our groups on when, on every every Tuesday, every Wednesday and discuss things there. But there are a lot of people, especially online, especially in, uh, rural centres that don't have access to that sort of things. So [00:06:00] I've been doing a lot of focus on getting our resources online our stories online, Um, and so our transform website has been accumulating these sorts of resources and guides, and that's been really, really helpful, I think. And in New Zealand as well, Like, we're not just doing fundraising to help youth. We're also trying to generate and create documents to help youth update their documents themselves. And by doing that, we're making it more more accessible because it'll help other trans people if they're not you to update their documents as well. So, yeah, doing a focus [00:06:30] on, uh, online resources has been really, really beneficial. And do you find you get much communication from from people outside the the main centres? Uh, yeah, we've been connecting with groups, and a new group has just started out in Palm North, which I'm extremely excited about because that's where I grew up. Um and yeah, it's slowly connecting all the groups together, but also making sure that each group still remains its itself because we can't just have one group for all gender nonconforming people, because we [00:07:00] all have different issues. So keeping the connections together, but also doing our own things is very important. So today we are in, uh, the National Library and, uh, the lesbian Gay of New Zealand have organised this kind of show and tell why is it important to be at some an event like this? It's fantastic to see what all the other groups are up to. Forming connections, uh, getting ideas from other groups. Like, um, we've been communicating with inside out. We've been communicating with, um, the gas. We've been communicating [00:07:30] with, uh, a gay line a little bit. And just forming those connections, I think, is strengthening us as a whole and also sort of refilling our buckets with our our strength and our inspiration.
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