YGender Turns 2:
Another year has passed and now YGender is 2 years old! Recently we had our 2nd Birthday/Xmas dinner on Lygon Street, ~40 people attended. The night ended with a short speech after sitting together for dinner and chatting to those at the tables. The brief speech by Sim acknowledged that we have done a lot in 2012, we have some new great plans for 2013, the current committee members till early December were thanked (Lee, Bailey, Micky, Allyx, Sean, Lucy and Sim), and lastly it was acknowledged that YGender has over time developed and assisted community …although what people benefit from most is meeting eachother and as a collective we form a community to turn to in a variety of ways unlike before YGender’s monthly program begun.

Collaborations/Assisting develop a documentary:
This year a few of the YGender committee members took the time to meet requests of outside organisations, such as; guest speaking, having input on media articles, speaking at launches to endorse projects, creating awareness on radio and training professionals/university students in the health sector. After recently adding up these collaborations with multiple organisations for a number of different type of audiences; YGender has collaborated over 30 times this year. We are glad to have participated and are now looking into developing a documentary that articulates the messages that often came from these collaborations. We hope to work on this docco over the next year after creating a new voluntary position of Media Project Director within YGender. This way we are less restricted to create more awareness/education about Sex & Gender Diverse people in Australia and will be able to spread our education further with the DVD developed.

Recent Internal Organising Changes:
-Some existing positions that are now vacant are: Secretary and Treasurer (although if there are no nominations for Treasurer, the current one will continue).
-A range of new positions have been created recently (Vice-President filled in September, and brand new positions soon to be advertised as vacant: Online Manager, Media Project Director, Co-President, and a range of people to help with some casual small tasks for large events and guest speaking).
-Some of the board roles (office bearer positions also have operational roles that organise Ygender’s monthly program), therefore we have been meeting all together once a month as a committee. The new change is that we are aiming for the board positions to meet additionally for governance tasks, the committee to meet to talk specifically about the objective/goal to provide/continue the monthly program whilst chaired by the Co-President (1).
-The current position of President who has been the chair for both operational and governance meetings will be split in to two so the two future co-presidents do less operational tasks each although still can commit more to their simplified role. With this role divided another new working group that helps community/peer projects and working bee days will be organised outside of the existing monthly program by Co-President 2.
-YGender began youth led and organised because in 2010 when the first organisers sought professionals support to run a pilot program we were told by most organisations at the time that they did not have the capacity to assist with the organising or to work with a group associated with risks. YGender received some assistance through initial small donations, a space to operate, plus advertising assistance although for the commitment of organising everything YGender has done, we did not have the option but to provide for our target group what was needed ourselves. We acknowledge youth GLBTI social support projects and projects organised by numerous organisations may be inclusive and assist the Sex & Gender Diverse Population, however SGD youth still have differing recommendations as a cohort for our Health & Wellbeing needs that are differing from the wider Same Sex Attracted segment of the community, therefore after we have developed as an organisation and so has our volunteers, the new change is: YGender is re-evaluating our place and what is most effective for our working groups to achieve as the voice advocating for SGD young people where they are currently left behind. And because we had to be youth led, we tried to claim that although we are abolishing that agreement (at least for now, in 2013) because we need more allies and assistance in some ways (the new agreement is that YGender committees/working groups/board needs a 50% youth minimum).

Some 2012 Committee Accomplishments:
-Providing all Monthly Discussion Groups as planned, topics included:
How do people feel about prosthetics, Gender Stereotypes and how they make us feel, Being Stealth and wether we feel it’s important to be visible within the wider community about gender, Emotional Impact hormones have on us, Focus groups, Sexuality and hormones, Coming out to family/friends/partners, Mental Health and how we cope with Gender Dysphoria, Regrets and poor choices we made throughout or pre-empting transition/how we would rather do things and what we learnt from our mistakes…
-Promoted positive living by organising our events with models that empower people to take action over their health and wellbeing. We transformed our Project Space when it was ready into an Art Therapy space, we are updating our resource directory, assisting establish a yoga group, and committee show an ongoing action of recommending the appropriate/SGD friendly-inclusive services to people at discussion groups/through our mailinglists and closed facebook group or in conversations about transitions/questioning as we are involved along the way
-There was a monthly Project/Creative Space and a monthly Intro/Coffee evening every single month this year! Each of the 4 events, each month brings in a crowd averaging to 14 people with different people attending according to what they want/need
-We organised 5 social events including: Lunches, Dinners, Photo Scavenger Hunt, Movies Day and also promoted 6 externally organised events which we promoted through our networks for people to meet and attend as a group
-We supported TransGender Victoria’s Submission RE: SGD youth homelessness, and the 3 recommendations for Victoria (State Level) proposed to Department of Health in May which are: Core Annual Funding to ZBGC, For Transition Related Surgeries to be allowed and provided in public hospital, and assistance to the Gender Dysphoria Clinic to support the previous recommendation
-We organised an event for Transgender Day of Remembrance when there was no other publicly advertised event on the day and we supported the Hares & Hyena’s spoken word event acknowledging TDOR a couple days later

Thank-you to the 2012 YGender Committee Members/Board:
All this was done, thanks to our small voluntary committee who have each shown resilience, teamwork, leadership, and facilitate the Monthly Program with a great attitude/positive regard toward people that attend/participate. We do feel like at times that it has been difficult because it hurts to see the injustice, discrimination and effect of oppression and pathologisation without holistic healthcare for our peers and ourselves. But to try and contribute positive to the SGD community, it is definitely worth the leadership journey and commitment. And now with 2012 ending it’s exciting to see what YGender will organise in 2013 with some new process and more positions.