Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Link to UniQ

UniQ is the New Zealand group for queer tertiary students, run by students for students. While every group is independent from each other, we all share similar goals, take part in national campaigns, and meet once a year for the national UniQ conference.

UniQ Victoria is open to any tertiary student in Wellington. We hold regular meetings at Victoria University’s Kelburn campus. These feature any number of activities, from movie nights to guest speakers to discussions on queer-related current events. This year, the Executive will focus on holding frequent, informal, gatherings, as well as the annual Traffic Light Party at Club Ivy. We’re also planning on working closely with queer groups and venues (such as WGWG) to promote an inclusive “queer community” feeling.

Anyone interested in finding out more can contact us at uniqvictoria@gmail.com.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Next Lesbian Drop-In: 5 May 2011

Hi women out there
The next Lesbian Drop-in Group will meet at Blondinis Bar
upstairs at the Embassy theatre. 6:30pm Thursday, May 5th.
For more info email jo at Jo.morrison.nz@gmail.com

Monday, April 25, 2011

School bullying & Blake Skjellerup

There are a lot of really good youtube clips that talk about school bullying. But this home grown version from Blake Skjellerup is a stand-out. I like his statement about making it better 'right now' - you don't have to wait until you leave school.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

What's Coming Up...

Here's some things to watch out for:

April Speakers for Members & Friends...
Jerad and Liz will contact Galaxies to see if they can be speakers at our meeting on 19th April. Chris is arranging wine and nibbles!

Next Intake Day for new Helpline & Gay Wellington Volunteers...
We’re expecting the next intake to be in May. Watch this space.

KAZAM! National Youth Hui
Over Queen’s Birthday Weekend on June 3rd-6th Rainbow Youth is running a National Youth Hui in Auckland for takataapui, queer and trans young people (27 or under) from across the country.

Buzzing after Out in the Square...

We're all still buzzing after a great day at Out in the Square. We had brilliant weather and lots of people came to our stall. The pink School’s Out t-shirts were a real success, volunteers did a great job and to top it all off we made a record profit of $937.

Out in the Square was part of our March publicity splurge, with promohomos (our publicity team) organising a range of publicity for Gay Wellington and School’s Out. Ian checked the web statistics and we had 969 website visits in March, with 610 being unique visitors. That’s the most we’ve ever had in a month.

The challenge for us is to translate good publicity into positive action for the queer Wellington community. Let’s make sure we can fill the helpline rosters, resurrect Newcomers to help meet the needs of gay men, and change our website to create a positive experience for Wellington queers. There’s much more we can do!

Chris' Co-Chair Update for April

Wasn’t it great to have the Outgames here in Wellington! I haven’t been to so many parties in just one week for years... and with a house full of Outgames friends and guests... what a week.

Thanks to all of you who were at the last meeting. We have a lot happening besides answering the telephone helpline. The national 0800 number discussions with Auckland are progressing well and we are also looking into our own group structure. We will soon be considering if moving to a ‘Board’ management structure with more closely allocated roles may be the way to go... freeing up our monthly meetings which we will then have the option to turn into more of an open public forum with invited speakers - with the Board and each work group meeting as needed.

Finally, a big thanks to everyone who helped with the Out in the Square sausage sizzle and info stall. It was fun, we were seen, and we also raised lots of dosh!

Newcomers Update

We’d like to resurrect Newcomers, which was put into recess last June. In March 90 people visited our Newcomers webpage and we get 1-3 emails a month asking about a support or social group for men who are gay. The most recent example was from a first year University student who wants to gain connections and make new friends in Wellington. Contact Bill to help out.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Mike's School's Out Report!

Hey guys, Mike here!
School’s Out has been going really well lately with a huge influx of newbies who seem to be really fitting in and enjoying themselves. One of the new boys said to me that he loved the “welcome environment” and said “I finally feel like I belong.” Those are direct quotes!

We recently had Dominique from Tranzform in to talk to us about trans stuff and the youth were quite interested and asked great questions.

We had Ruth from Like Minds who talked to us about a film competition. We’re considering making a film and entering which should be fun. We also went over the terms included in the queer umbrella.

Kassie and I have also started visiting school assemblies and we seem to be getting a good response from the students.

We’ve also been busy planning a facilitator training session on May 7th with the help of Rainbow Youth. Rainbow Youth (with the help of the amazing people at Outline) have been good enough to send someone down from Auckland just for us. Good to see other places offering us support.

If you’re interested in helping out or if you want more details, then e-mail queer_schools_out@hotmail.com All in all it’s been a fantastic month and we’re all looking forward to see what April has in store!

-Mike and the School’s Out team-