Wed 2 Dec 2015 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The entire board of Body Positive has formally resigned after no members offered to form a transition group to assist it with the process of electing a new board. The resignation, effected yesterday, comes after a motion of no confidence in the board, put forward at a November 21st Special General Meeting by a group of members, was successful. Immediately after that vote the outgoing board committed to helping with the handover to a replacement board, publicly asked for interested members to come forward to form a transition group and scheduled a meeting for this Saturday to start the transition and handover process. "Unfortunately there has been no response at all to our request for members to assist the transition," BP's Executive Director Mark Fisher says. The request was highlighted in gay media reporting of the SGM and included in communications from Fisher to the general membership. Fisher says he also directly emailed six of the people who had been most outspoken at no confidence SGM. "I tried three times but... nothing." The Saturday meeting has been cancelled and it now falls to Fisher to oversee the election process to create a new board, the outgoing board having transferred its authority to him as an interim measure. "I'll have to give three weeks notice of a SGM to elect a new board. Nomination forms will go out and as nominations are seconded and received members will get biographies of the nominees," he says. Although a date for the SGM has not been confirmed, due to the looming Christmas/New year break it is likely to be set down for mid-January. Proxy and online voting will be available as well as voting at the SGM itself. Fisher says the timing is not as awkward as it might seem as he will be able to focus more on the election process while BP's Auckland admin office and drop in centre is closed for the holiday break. That closure will be between 18 December and 11 January, a little longer than usual. In the meantime Fisher says he will be slightly constrained by not being able to make funding applications or sign cheques, but due to the holiday period "that's ok, the timing's actually good." Body Positive is the country's largest HIV peer support and advocacy organisation, with a membership almost exclusively of gay and bisexual men who make up over three quarters of those living with HIV in New Zealand.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 2nd December 2015 - 7:47pm