Thu 13 Aug 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The Board of the Auckland Outgames 2016, which resigned en masse a month ago, is requiring that the organisation be formally wound up and says its resignation was a result of the event's international organisation refusing to delay the Games. GayNZ.com understands that while the entire board of Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc. resigned on July 18 technically they are still responsible for the organisation for the duration of their three-month notice of resignation period, as required by its standing rules. A small group of the organisation's Executive Committee has said it remains committed to running the Outgames festival of sport, human rights and culture in February so long as sufficient community support can be committed to the project. In their first public comment, issued tonight, the board members have confirmed that they had come to believe in early July that it would be "extremely difficult to deliver a quality event in February 2016 and that more time was needed for the Executive team to obtain sponsorship." At the time of the resignations no corporate sponsorship for the sports, human rights and cultural festival had been secured and Auckland Council's event promotion and funding arm, ATEED, had declined to help fund it. The board members say that holding the Outgames concurrently with the Auckland Pride Festival was not going to be the advantage it was initially expected to be. They say they had told the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association-Asia Pacific (GLISA AP) that the initial optimism regarding holding the Games and Pride at the same time "had not been supported by a number of potential sponsors who had been approached." They say GLISA AP would not accept their advice to delay the games until better funding could be secured. "Unfortunately, GLISA AP refused the board's request to change the date from February 2016 to a new date later in 2016. It was that decision by GLISA AP and the former board's assessment that the Outgames could not be successfully delivered within the original timeframe stipulated by GLISA AP that resulted in the resignations of all former board members" this evenings statement says. The board members say they are "disappointed" that the GLISA AP board has not publicly clarified that they had sought the delay. "This was a clausal option of the license agreement that the Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc. and GLISA AP entered into." In instructing the Auckland organisation's secretary, David Gurney, to formally wind it up, the board members say they "wish to make clear that should others wish to deliver the event in February 2016 they will need to establish a new body and enter into a Partnership and License agreement with GLISA AP". Gurney and the remaining members of the Executive Committee of the Auckland Outgames went public about the loss of the board members and lack of sponsorship two weeks ago. They have been calling on the Auckland and wider glbti communities to pull together and provide volunteer and other resources to enable a probably scaled-down Outgames event to be run in February. The group said late last week that responses to their call had been encouraging. The Auckland Outgames 2016 Inc. board members, all of whom resigned, are Phylesha Brown-Acton, Martin King, Vinnie Sykes, Prue Tamatekapua and Kerry Underhill.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 13th August 2015 - 8:12pm