Rainbow Wellington Rainbow Wellington has just has its AGM. Here is the report from Chair Rawa Karetai on what the group has achieved over the past year: The 2013 to 2014 year has been a busy time for Rainbow Wellington. Most notably, we have had a change of leadership at the helm with the handover of chair being handed to me from the board after Tony Simpson resigned at the last AGM. One of the most important things Rainbow Wellington must concentrate on is membership, volunteers and therefore relevancy. The Board has been thinking a lot over the year to try and help grow Rainbow Wellington but we need help. Supporting the Community: Fulfilling our Charity Role Virtually all Rainbow Wellington’s income is from membership fees, and a few fundraising events, such as a recent successful Unity Books review night. Grants and donations are its largest expenditure. Rainbow Wellington continues to make a substantial contribution to the LGBTI Community in the Wellington Region, and regularly supports events like Out in the Square and the Out Takes Reel Queer Film Festival. Rainbow Wellington has clear criteria for grants and donations. A couple of the highlights over the year are as follows. Out in the Square; This year like many years in the past, Rainbow Wellington helped financially assist Out in the Square, this year however, we decided to go a bit further and promote ourselves at Out in the Square, something that hasn’t been done for many years. QSA A couple of major highlights this year is that, Rainbow Wellington helped Schools Out by contributing $1000 for them to move into their own accommodation. Homophobic bullying in our schools almost certainly remains the largest remaining issue of discrimination against our LGBTI communities, and Rainbow Wellington considers that supporting those groups who really work ‘at the coal face’ in this area. Griffin Nichol, Soprano Singer; We mostly support other local community groups, but occasionally an individual request comes along which is special and clearly deserves support. Griffin Nichol is a young FTM trans person, who formerly sang soprano in the National Youth Choir. After transitioning he has now been accepted back into the choir as a tenor, a real first in many ways. Griffin was asking for financial support to be able to participate in the choir’s tour of the USA and Canada. Rainbow Wellington gave the talented singer $500 to help his bid. We also supported: ● Outtakes; ● Queer Avengers Conference; ● Supporting delegate to HR Conference at the OutGames 2014 in Darwin, on behalf of the Wellington Outgames 2011; ● Queer Youth - Patchworks Hui; and ● Much, much more. Local Campaigns and Issues: Local campaigns and issues is one of the core activities that we do throughout the year. Rainbow Wellington has developed over the years a voice of authority especially in the areas of Political Advocacy, Representation and Services. Rainbow Wellington is often asked for comment and actively participates in the wider conversations that impact on the LGBTI Community. We are proud of the work that we have achieved with the very little manpower and resources at our disposal. There is always a lot to do and we’d welcome more people to help. Homophobic Bullying General Oversight; Chris Hipkins, Labour’s Education Spokesperson; Jan Logie and Kevin Hague, Green party; New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU). Homophobic Bullying still continues to be the number one issue that members of the LGBTI Community still faces. Comprehensive anti-bullying legislation is probably the last frontier for LGBTI rights in New Zealand, after the passage of comprehensive human rights protections for the transgender community. Anti-Homophobic Bullying and better human rights is at the heart of what Rainbow Wellington campaigns the most about. This year we’ve focused on Schools, Sport and Elderly Support. We believe we help assist other youth based organisations through the help of funding but also by lobbying parliament officials such as Chris Hipkins, Jan Logie and Kevin Hague. We’ve recently started the discussion with Sporting organisations, the obvious, yet the hardest one to talk to was the NZRU. Quite frankly, they weren’t very forthcoming to help with solutions or take on board any suggestions. However, we will continue to raise the issues with them and other New Zealand Sporting Organisations. LGBTI Elderly: Over the past year, Rainbow Wellington has turned its attention to aging and issues facing older LGBTI members of the community. LGBTI elders and retirees are still considered a newer phenomenon creating challenges and opportunities as a range of aging issues are becoming more understood as those who live open lives redefine commonly held beliefs and as retirees newly come out of the closet. LGBTI individuals are less likely to have strong family support systems in place to have relatives to care for them during aging. They are twice as likely to enter old age living as a single person; and two and a half times more likely to live alone. Because institutionalized homophobia as well as cultural discrimination and harassment still exist, they are less likely to access health care, housing, or social services or when they do, find the experience stressful or demeaning. Knowing this, Rainbow Wellington has started to open the conversation in this area in particular, with our local retirement homes. This campaign while still in its infant stage of development, is something Rainbow Wellington consider important as most Rainbow Wellington Members are facing these issues or will soon. Constitution conversation submission. Rainbow Wellington made a submission to the Constitution Conversation last year, primarily on strengthening our country's Bill of Rights and the Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We expressed our support for the Treaty of Waitangi as New Zealand’s founding document. For various reasons reference to the Treaty was not incorporated in the New Zealand Bill of Rights. However, Rainbow Wellington considered that the time would now be appropriate for the position of the Treaty to be revisited, within the broader framework of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements, to recognise the status of Māori as tangata whenua o Aotearoa and reflect te mana Māori motuhake. Our main concern in supporting our LGBTI communities is human rights, and in particular the place of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) and the Human Rights Act 1993 within our constitutional arrangements. We believe that this legislation needs strengthening, to further protect the rights of our communities, and others. Blood Donation Review Rainbow Wellington maintains there should be no blanket ban on gay and bisexual men giving blood in New Zealand, but individual risk assessments instead. A team invited by New Zealand Blood Service (NZBS) to carry out a review has made a draft recommendation that the stand down period be reduced from five years from the time a man has had anal or oral sex with another man, to one year. It rejected the idea of one-on-one risk based assessments based on a man’s sexual behaviour, saying no research has been published in the area, and it would also mean gay and bi men would be hit with invasive in-depth questions about their sex lives. Rainbow Wellington continues to say that a blanket ban is discriminatory and risk based assessment of actual behaviour should be the goal. Rainbow Wellington pointed out last year to a policy change of the American Medical Association, which now opposes the lifetime ban still imposed by the US FDA. As part of that, board member Dr William Kobler said in a statement: "This new policy urges a federal policy change to ensure blood donation bans or deferrals are applied to donors according to their individual level of risk and are not based on sexual orientation alone." Rainbow Wellington has since urged to the New Zealand review group to look at this further. We will continue to monitor progress in this area. Local Body Elections Last year Rainbow Wellington invited all candidates for the regional and city councils to submit a profile to our members to vote for in the Local Body Elections after being approached by a couple of candidates initially. We did this to help provide an opportunity for our members to engage with the elections in an informed way. Not all candidates submitted a profile, but we appreciated those who did. The majority of councillors now support the LGBTI community which is helpful for us. We intend to have a similar approach in both the General Elections and the Local Body Elections in the future. Rainbow Tick: This year, Rainbow Wellington agreed to endorse the Rainbow Tick initiative. Rainbow Ticks are awarded to organisations that complete a Diversity or prioritising different campaigns over another. We will move these discussions into public consultation by engaging our members and our major stakeholders in the near future. Feedback from these sectors are very important to us and major decisions won’t be made without wider consultation. International Campaigns and Issues In recent times, Rainbow Wellington has started to focus on International Issues and have developed some great international relationships. The growing connectedness of the people of our world has made it easier for Rainbow Wellington to engage internationally. Our voice in this area is developing. We are starting to gain an international recognition as a place where people as far away as Uganda can seek help. We’ve been able to give them a chance to be heard. Support shown for LGBTI people in places like Nigeria, Uganda and Russia. Pride House Worldwide - In solidarity with Sochi 2014; Visiting Nigerian pastor; Ugandan people contacting us for help; While the oppression of the LGBTI communities in places like Nigeria, Uganda and Russia seem so distant from our daily lives here in New Zealand, Rainbow Wellington Board members have been following the events happening overseas. This past year we have heard first hand the damaging impacts of policies made aboard. Rainbow Wellington has been in contact with people seeking help and looking for options when their own country is hostile towards them and we’ve been able to help provide them with contacts to assist. I have had a couple of conversations via Skype and the courage and activism of LGBTI communities in these countries are wearing thin, but they still fight on. Showing solidarity and support is important to the board but we’ve also helped by giving a local voice to New Zealand media about these issues. Commonwealth LGBTI rights initiative This past year, Rainbow Wellington urged New Zealand leaders, and those from across the Commonwealth, to take action to stop widespread human rights abuses against LGBTI people. Homosexuality is still illegal in 41 of the 53 Commonwealth member states and Rainbow Wellington joined other organisations in particular, the Kaleidoscope Trust to help produce a report into Commonwealth human rights abuses called “Speaking Out: The rights of LGBTI citizens from across the Commonwealth”. US Embassy: US Ambassador Farewell; Nxt:14 LGBTIQ Youth Leaders Conference; and Future Ambassador. Rainbow Wellington has had a working relationship with the US Embassy ever since former Ambassador David Huebner first took office. Since then Rainbow Wellington has hosted a few meetings over his tenure and the board thought it was only fitting that we farewelled David when his tenure finished late in 2013. Since then, I have presented at the American Embassy’s Nxt:14 LGBTIQ Youth Leaders Conference. Rainbow Wellington will continue a working relationship with the Embassy into the future. We are currently waiting for the new Ambassador to be formally signed off however we understand that Mark Gilbert has accepted President Obama’s Nomination. Board Appointments and Communications: Board membership: Chair, Adrian and Rawa; Resignations; and Vacancies. Rawa Karetai After Tony Simpson’s resignation from the board at the AGM, Adrian stepped in as the temporary chair for the first few months, followed by myself who is the current chair. Two others stood down at the AGM and were replaced with four new representatives. Jeremy Green resigned a few months into his tenure and Adrian Sainsbury and Tony Reed are expected to resign at the end of their tenures. Rainbow Wellington is currently seeking board members who are keen to be active in the operations and governance of Rainbow Wellington in particular, Rainbow Wellington is missing the diversity of Women, Trans*, younger members and multiculturalism. We are also particularly seeking the technical skills of web and email maintenance, graphic design, secretarial and research duties. Honorary President: Tony Simpson, 2013; and Louisa Wall, 2014. A new non constitutional role was decided by the Rainbow Wellington Board early after the Annual General Meeting of 2013 as a gesture to highlight each year a person or people who have contributed notably to LGBTI communities. The Board decided to appoint Tony Simpson in 2013 as gratitude for his length of service as a board member and chairperson. Tony had been on the board for the best part of a decade mostly as the chairperson. This year the Rainbow Wellington Board has decided to nominate Manurewa MP, Louisa Wall to honour her sponsorship of the successful passing of the Marriage Equality Bill. Website and e-mail systems. Special thanks to Adrian who is stepping down from the role at the AGM. We have been trying to replace Adrian now for nearly two years, A number of false starts trying to replace him. It is disappointing that members or volunteers are not coming forward. The website and the email system is critical to how we communicate to members. Facebook page. The Rainbow Wellington Facebook page has picked up a lot of traffic since the AGM mostly helped by the fact that we’re engaging with the platform more. Media Coverage. Over the past year we have certainly managed to be picked up on some major news networks. Most notably for our comments around a Ugandan Pastor that come to Auckland. Rainbow Wellington Events and Summary: Former Justice Kirby: Speaking Visit; and Future Collaboration. Last year Rainbow Wellington invited Former Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby to come and talk to our members. Kirby is widely known to be an eloquent and in-demand orator, the openly-gay former judge is an outspoken gay rights advocate. Kirby has served in a multitude of international and UN positions, including the WHO Global Commission on AIDS and UNAIDS. The event was well attended and it was considered a rather successful event. Since then, I have been invited to Australia to join Kirby and a few others from the University of New South Wales and the Marriage Equality Campaign Group in Australia to talk about Marriage Equality and the lessons learnt here in New Zealand, the impacts of social injustice and oppression on the LGBTI Community. The Trans-Tasman relationship with these organisations seem to be flourishing well. Friday drinks: Venue Changes Friday night drinks on the first Friday of every month continue. This past year we have had the inclusion of two new venues, one at Ivy and the other at the Rush Bar, these are both corporate members. While not a corporate member, the assistance of the Wellesley Hotel has been helpful. We’ve been able to use their meeting rooms free of charge. Dinners: Pizza Banquet Dinner Mid-Winter Dinner; and End of year Dinner. These events are a great way for the membership to relax and socialise in a different forum other than the Friday night drinks we host. They continue to be well attended but would like to see more of our members come along. Thanks to Phil and Grant for organising these events, we certainly appreciate the help. Unity book evening: Financially last year’s Unity book evening was the most successful so far, thanks largely to the raffle of the prizes donated by Jared Gulian. In summary, Rainbow Wellington continues to achieve above and beyond what is possible for a small group of volunteers and board members. There is still plenty to do, however, without the ongoing support of members and our volunteers,, Rainbow Wellington seriously risks losing the momentum we’ve gained over the years and could easily fizzle out of existence if we can’t grow our membership or our volunteer base. We really do need your help. - Rawa Karetai, Rainbow Wellington Chairperson Rawa Karetai - 25th March 2014