Director's Report

I am glad and honoured to see how many people decide to join us tonight with our Annual General Meeting.

It feels like such a short while ago, when we had our previous AGM, 1 December 2007. We were a smaller group of people and just moved into our office space at Saartjie Baartman Centre, which we celebrated. It was not a formal structured event; there was a Chairperson’s report, Treasurer report and Director’s report. Richard Norman from Good Hope Metropolitan Community Church also gave a message to us and we enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Whilst lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and organisations throughout the country are challenged with the rising amount of hate crimes – the effects on our own community and people are also more visible. Many reports came to Gender DynamiX office, of transgender, transsexual and gender non-conforming people who are challenged in more than one way. People who are unemployed feel the strain of having to live with identity documents which are not reflecting their presentation and find it very difficult to seek employment.

Medical access and financial strains in order to seek mental health, medical and legal assistance became difficulties of our constituency’s daily lives and also challenge our organisation.

Throughout the country people experience difficulties. We had to assist parents of adolescents in understanding matters around transsexualism. It is remarkable how more and more parents are contacting us. I am also proud to say that we are more and more reaching out to people “beyond cyber space” and breaking the stereotypical “white” mould. We are in contact with trans people from across South Africa, and also reach out to people in quite a number of other countries on our continent.

This year felt as if was the busiest year ever. We employed another person, our outreach officer: Tebogo Nkoana, who joined us, February this year. And Lumuli Mbonile will join us from mid October as our researcher. Lumuli is originally from Tanzania but for a while in South Africa, as he is completing his MA at Pretoria Academic Hospital and will mainly focus his research work on trans related medical access.

Gender DynamiX hosted quite a number of workshops and presentations this year, including our 4th GDA, the Trans Retreat in partnership with Triangle Project, a presentation in New York as part of the first Global discussions of the Sexuality Resource Centres, a presentation at the Victim Empowerment Program conference in Durban, a presentation at the University of Washington and Gender Odyssey conference in Seattle. We also presented a workshop for the Big Issue, University of Pretoria and WITS. We had quite a few radio and television interviews including Bush radio, Good Hope FM, Radio Sonder Grense, Special Assignment and SABC Africa.

This year was exiting, challenging and full of new developments. Amongst our achievements I definitely count two highlights: our ability to reach out to many communities and our strengthening in partnerships with Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children and with the Gay and Lesbian Archives, which will result in our first publication next year.

Our base of external donors are formed by Atlantic Philanthropies, Astraea Lesbian Foundation and indirectly via research we were funded by the Ford Foundation and we received donations via the Gender Odyssey Conference, when an anonymous individual made a donation followed by various departments of the University of Washington. We are constantly seeking new avenues of funding and are registered as a Public Benefit Organisation – which means when a person donates to Gender DynamiX, they can submit it on their SARS forms to claim back.

I want to thank the Management Committee for their direction, support, timeless efforts and motivation. To Caroline and Tebogo – thanks for all your hard work, and for keeping up with me.

I hope the next year will be marked with victories and many contributions from people around the country who are all having the same goal in mind: Transgender Rights are Human Rights!

Bookkeeper's Narrative

Our main source of income received was from Funds received.

They were:
•    Astraea Fund – received in April 2007
•    Astraea Fund 2 – received March 2008
•    Magi Fund – received in May 2007
•    Ford Foundation – received in August 2007
•    Ford Foundation – projection to receive as follow up from NYC - 2008
•    Atlantic Philanthropies – received in October 2007
•    Atlantic Philanthropies – second amount received in July 2008


Astraea Fund:
We received this in April 2007 for the amount of R21086.00, and we have depleted this fund.

We received a further contribution in March 2008 for R39 675.00, and the balance remaining on the 31 August 2008 is R24 617.00

As you can see we have not spent the bulk of this money, but what we did spend went on Catering, Cleaning, Conferences, Office amenities, Postage, Travel exp, Printing and Stationery.


Magi Fund:
We received this in May 2007 for the amount of R56 720.00, and the fund is now depleted.


Ford Foundation:
The balance of R1866.00 was transferred to the “Other” account on the 01/04/2008.

We received another amount of R3502.00 in July, which covered the expense of R3276 for International travel.  We then transferred the balance of R226 to the “Other expense” account.

Other Expenses
We use this to allocate all expenses that are not covered by a specific fund.

We will “transfer” income leftover from other funds to cover these expenses, as well as any money received from invoices issued and donations received.

We have received money via Gender Odyssey, University of Washington DC,   other small cash donations and interest earned from the Money Market account, have been allocated to this account.

Currently the figure is on R15 313.00 overdrawn, but our hope is that the nett effect is that we have enough money from our donations etc to cover these expenses.


Atlantic Philanthropies:
We received this in October 2007 for the amount of R 751 900.00, and the balance remaining on the 31 August 2008 is R173 306.00.

This fund has been beneficial to the day to day running of the organization.

We were able to get computers, printers and office furniture as well as pay the majority of the organizations overheads.

However we did not budget enough for stationery, subscriptions and Computers.

This problem has now been solved as we are receiving money from other funds such as Astraea and are now able to draw from that to cover stationery etc.

We received a second contribution in July 2008 for the amount of R775 500.

We have not spent any of this money yet, and we have put it into a Money Market account, where we earn interest and transfer it to the “Other Expense” account and allocated it as interest received.

Audit

Find a copy of the Audit Report by following this link.

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