TransLeeds AGM 2022 Minutes

TransLeeds Annual General Meeting - 05.12.22

6.15pm

Attendees

• Trustees: Tom S (acting chair), Siobhan F, Christina G

• Service users, volunteers, staff members

• Total attendees: 11

• Apologies: Maxwell H

Welcome

• Tom opens the meeting

• Apologies received from Max who has deputised Tom to chair in his absence

• Max’s video is played

  • Max thanks his fellow trustees and the staff members and volunteers for their work in the last year

  • He announces he is standing down as the chairperson and as a trustee.

Discussion of Agenda Items

List of achievements in the last year:

• 48 support groups, 4 karaoke, one 90s night, 3 picnics, roughly 6 boardgaming events and 3 coffee mornings run in 2022

• Swim ‘n’ Gym sessions have been running for 6 months

• Various grants have been applied for. A £1000 grant from Leeds LGBT+ Hub was awarded to support the Swim ‘n’ Gym sessions, and an outstanding grant application to the Advonet Advocacy Development Fund for £10,000 is awaiting approval

• A Discord server has been set up

• A large binder donation from GC2B worth roughly £4000 was received, and the binder library is running well

• Working with GIC, Conservatoire, Hate Crimes oversight committee, LLCC, asylum and refugee groups, food banks, sports groups

• Prides visited, such as Wolds Pride and Hull Pride, as well as hundreds of people marching in the TransLeeds section of the Leeds Pride Parade

• Advocacy activities have been well used this year and TransLeeds is looking to expand these in the coming year

• Board gaming was set up and is running successfully

• A LinkedIn profile has been set up

• TransLeeds has a presence at the monthly Social & Wellbeing Cafe with Angels of Freedom.

• TransLeeds is present on the West Yorkshire Police Independent Advisory Group.

• A new website has been created

• Office space at Skyline has been established

• Trainings that staff have completed by staff this year: suicide prevention, mental health first aid

• TransLeeds’ Trans Day of Remembrance vigil was attended by over 100 people

• Trans Pride Leeds (affiliated with TransLeeds) ran successfully

• Many new policies were developed and released earlier in the year. These give TransLeeds a framework

• Delivered many Trans Inclusion training sessions for external organisations

Staff changes

• James L stepped down as a trustee in January and the role of coordinator was passed to Tom. James is now the Trans Awareness Trainer

• Oliver left in January and Tom took over as treasurer

• Kei joined and now runs the binder library

• Flo joined as the assistant coordinator

• Alex joined as an engagement officer

Financial report

• TransLeeds monies are held in two places- the NatWest Bank account and the PayPal account

• total in PayPal £1501.65

• total in bank £4122.75

• total income this year for the bank account is £1060.87 and for PayPal is £1454.37

Main sources of income:

• Grant of 1k from council LGBT+ Hub for Swim ‘n’ Gym

• Donation of £500 from Hyde Park Football Club women’s and nonbinary team

• Two regular donors, Rhianne and Michelle

• One large donation from Stuart of £400

• Other large one-off donations (£40-£150) from Michael, Henry, George, Abigail, Paula, Harry, Sara, Will
  

• Advonet grant - yet to hear back as to whether this was successful

Explanation of new registered charity status

• TransLeeds is currently a constitutional charity not a registered charity, but the paperwork to receive registered charity status was submitted 2 months ago and the outcome has not yet been received.

• The changes that come with becoming a registered charity that will affect the service users are:

  • TransLeeds becomes a brand new charity but acts under the same name

  • The constitution is a template constitution, we do not get to self-create in the way we used to

  • The outgoing constitution is covered by policies, so not much will change practically in terms of the new constitution.

Electing the Board of Trustees

Tom, Shiv and Christina all stood to be re-elected as trustees.

Speeches given by those standing to be a trustee

Christina and Shiv spoke together as they feel that they have accomplished tasks together:

• Revamped policies

• Updated constitution

• Partnered with Rainbow Junktion

• Incorporated sports (football, badminton, swim and gym)

• Partnered with WYPAIG

• Became part of West Yorkshire Police scrutiny panel

• Joined LGBT+ Hub (council group)

• Worked with Angels of Freedom

• Attended Wellbeing cafes

• Performed GP advocacy

• Performed housing advocacy for destitute asylum seekers

• Performed GIC advocacy

• In process of working with Leeds GIC to set up a better advocacy service

• Worked with Bok Godall who designs underwear for trans people

• Organised Trans Pride Leeds 2022

• Partnered with Leeds LGBT Community Consortium

• Partnered with and connected with other organisations to improve TransLeeds services, i.e. Fresh Grassroots, African rainbow family

• Organised and ran coffee mornings

• Met local MPs to discuss local issues

• Made TransLeeds more accessible to a wider audience

• Addressed racism from TransLeeds in the past and how this has been worked through: Mainly accessibility measures and reaching out to a wider range of groups.

• Ran the LGBT history month stall

• Connected with Leeds Conservatore, University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University

• Ran a stall at Leeds University Union

• Worked with the museum of transology

• Gender clinic workers coming to visit support groups

• Organised for Sarsville to visit support groups

• Hoping to get a grant from national lottery (which is already in the works) once the new charity status is attained

Tom S:

• Tom feels his role in the past year has “Involved lots of behind the scenes work”

• TransLeeds started as a group of trans friends who wanted to help other trans people and it grew to serve the community. This meant that policies were not really in place, which Tom has been instrumental in correcting by writing all of the new policies introduced this year.

• He has set up a supervision process for staff members.

• Vision for next year:

  • Tom wants a vision / statement and strategy to be created and for service users to be able to hold the organisation accountable to that

  • Tom wants to organise more external training sessions for staff eg. training around the inclusion of refugees and asylum seekers.

Voting

• Votes were counted by James and Flo.

• One attendee abstained from voting.

• Shiv, Christina and Tom were all re-elected as trustees with a supermajority

Closing statements

• Congratulations were given to the new trustees and thanks were given to attendees

Closing AGM, 6.54pm

• Moving into a break and then into the main month meeting.