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 Looking back at the past six months, I cannot believe how the time has passed! If I look at the amount of activities completed, even without core funding, I really have big dreams and high hopes for the day Gender DynamiX will actually function with funding.
We kicked off with a Management Committee meeting in January and were host to a German anthropologist, who specialises gender issues. We managed to build a good relationship, which, in turn, will lead to future collaborations. Shortly after that followed Cape Town Pride and the Out In Africa Film Festival. Gender DynamiX also presented two short training sessions to The Inner Circle, a Muslim  LGBT organisation based in Cape Town.
In February 2007 the International Resource Network (IRN) held its first Africa meeting in Dakar, Senegal. Gender DynamiX managed to have representation there and our representative was selected to be part of the Africa Editorial Board. Beginning of March 2007 Gender DynamiX was represented at the South African National AIDS Commission (SANAC) meeting, where the AIDS policy of SA over the next few years was discussed. At the end of March and beginning of April, Gender DynamiX joined forces with GALA, Women’sNet and Kate Chisholm, an independent artist, to facilitate the first transgender Body Map workshop. This was a huge success, mainly because we managed to reach out to transgender people from rural areas, whom we had never met before. An art exhibition followed shortly, which received lots of LGBT media coverage as it was published on the websites of Behind The Mask, Mamba on Line, Gmax and in the Gmail newsletter. ***** At the beginning of May 2007, Gender DynamiX attended the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) Africa conference. During the conference Gender DynamiX was invited to do two presentations. (To read the presentation about Gender based violence experienced by trans people, click here and to read the presentation about Imbalances that polarize gender based inequalities, click here) One of the main aims of this specific ILGA conference was to establish the ILGA Africa Region. Gender DynamiX’s attendance was well received and for most people it was the first time that they had learnt anything about transgender, transsexual and intersex people. The issue was quite prominent and the group as a whole felt it was very important to have transgender and intersex representation on the board. It was written into the new constitution that the board should always include a member who was transgendered or intersexed. The African Gender Institute (AGI) of the University Of Cape Town (UCT) invited GDX to do a presentation to its undergraduate students about GDX as an organisation and its work for transgender people. Gender DynamiX received funding from the MAGI fund and Astraea Foundation. The board decided to put the two funds together and host a 4 day workshop, combined with a strategic planning workshop. Besides the Management Committee members, the budget allowed for another 16 people. The purpose of this strategic planning workshop was to come up with projects and activities for the next three years. The people who attended needed to represent the broadest possible spectrum of the Gender DynamiX constituency – transpeople of South Africa. Transfolk from different cultural backgrounds, ages, income groups, languages, gender identities, sexual orientation and geographical areas needed to be present. Among the 22 people were people from rural and urban areas. There were people from Gauteng, Western Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Mpumalanga and the Northern Province. Ages varied from 20 to 50. Due to the good working relationship between GDX and GALA, we also managed to have a person from GALA who filmed the entire workshop of four days. GDX also worked together with the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) to produce a pamphlet on safe sex for transwomen. This project was started in November 2006 and the final product came off the presses at the end of May 2007. You can have a look at it here. During May 2007, Gender DynamiX and Kayla were invited by Dr Eve and were honoured to be her guest lecturers at the South African Council of Applied Psychology (SACAP) as part of a training course in Human Sexology. Afri Health Conference, a Pan African conference on Public Health to specifically address issues of education in Public Health on the continent, took place in Centurion, Pretoria from 13 – 15 June 2007. Various break-away discussion sessions were created and it was the Gender in Health Symposium which drew attention and motivated the presence of Gender DynamiX. It was a very interesting conference, a large number of contacts were made and it was a very delightful experience to “take Gender DynamiX” into a new direction and a different sector! In conjunction with OUT LGBT Wellbeing in Pretoria and Dr Gareth Hunt, GDX also started facilitating a support group in Pretoria. During this busy period GDX also managed to send out two press releases, one about the body maps workshop and exhibition and the second about the [Un]accessibility of shelters for transpeople. GDX also received coverage in the Huisgenoot/You magazine – which is the most widely read magazine in South Africa. |
