Inside AUREA - Oct 2021
Written by the Editor Word count: 1200 words
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Welcome to Inside AUREA - where you get to find out what we’re up to. This monthly issue will keep you up-to-date, improve on our transparency, and connect us better to our fellow aromantics. Inside AUREA will mean you can share your thoughts about our plans, get to know us, and lend a hand in shaping what we become.
This will be a loosely structured piece where we discuss our direction and progress. There’ll be talk of what we’re up to, what we’re stuck on, and what we plan to do in the future. Inside AUREA will be posted within the week after our monthly team meeting, which tends to take place on the 1st weekend of the month. We’ve just had our October meeting and there’s a few things to catch you up on.
Team members
AUREA is a volunteer organisation and that means we’re nothing without our people. We’ve recently brought on some new team members to help run the show. To smooth out the recruitment process we have UnYoung as our Volunteer Onboarder. In place to continue that support we have Faagun as our Volunteer Coordinator. To improve our community networking we’ve brought on Sofia as our Organisational Outreach Manager. And we’ve expanded our news team with the help of Arielle.
With hellos come goodbyes. A few months ago our President Zuzanna stepped down as she achieved some fantastic life goals and recognised it was time for her to move on. AUREA is Zuzanna’s brainchild and this organisation wouldn’t be here without her ambition.
Restructuring and NGOs
With a presidential position empty we found ourselves asking who would be the best person to fill that role. A better question to ask was: do we need a president? Through the anti-oppressive practises we’ve been working on, a lot of research has suggested a horizontal hierarchy is a less authoritative and more community oriented means of organization. However, we’re also working on becoming an official non-profit organisation (exciting!) and there are certain criteria we need to fill to be eligible for this.
It makes the most sense for us to become an NGO in the United States since we have multiple US team members and for tax reasons. Their NGO system has an expected way of running organisations, which includes having a President, Secretary, and Treasurer, as well as a Board of Directors to oversee finances. So a part of this process to becoming an NGO includes balancing our goal of a horizontal hierarchy. Does this mean certain positions are in name only? What does that look like practically? Will we switch titles around occasionally despite what work people are doing to best meet these requirements? The Board is generally made up of people outside of the organisation, who gets to be on the board and how do we ensure they aren’t given more unconscious authority? Is it worthwhile for us to become an NGO at all with our current goals? Lots of interesting questions and problems to answer!
Changing our recruitment practises
A staple of volunteer organisations is struggling with recruitment. This is to be expected and will be an ongoing process. A consistent goal we’ve had is to include diverse aro perspectives among the team and that is something we’re slowly making progress on. The question is, as always, how?
Going forward we intend to keep an eye on our specialist volunteers - i.e. the contributors, translators, representatives, etc. - as they have already shown interest in working with AUREA. Similarly we have a few projects on the go (to be discussed later) and these people are a wonderful help. We plan also to reach out to people via social media, specifically people who show passion for aromantic advocacy. Through our organisational outreach manager we’ll contact other aro and a-spec organisations to see if they know of anyone who may be interested. At the very least, if we don’t find more team members, we’re making connections.
Our anti-oppressive practices
For the last couple of months we’ve been reflecting on how we run AUREA and how we want to run AUREA. So far we’ve covered mental health, disability justice, decolonizing queerness, accountability, and inclusivity. These are obviously intensive and vast subjects; our research into them has been specific to what we have the means to do. Which is in many ways a great amount and not as much as we’d like - it’s a balancing act. We’re taking a break from research to hold a meeting this month to review what we’ve learned because, before we begin learning more, we need to implement what we’ve learned so far. This review will likely include more restructuring and reflection. It’ll include interrogating how we make decisions and what we prioritise.
A part of this project is to better ourselves and show people what we’re doing. We’ve put together an Anti-Oppression Organizational Chart - which you can see here - which looks at certain subjects and how we engage with them. At the meeting we’ll be highlighting where we are on that chart for you to see and this is something we’ll keep up-to-date on. This will be a slow process as we are all here as volunteers and we have a lot to learn, but these goals are something we’re deeply committed to.
Socialising as a team
Despite AUREA being over two years old, socialising isn’t something we’ve ever prioritised. We’ve been, so to speak, all business and any socialising we did was a by-product of spending time together. During our research we’ve learned that socialising is in direct opposition to how white supremacy infiltrates the way organisations run. Socialising also improves work ethic, community trust, and accountability. So one of our goals is to just hang out more. It’s been fun. We also want to include our specialist volunteers in this. There’s been a decent amount of separation between the main volunteer team and the volunteers who help us with more specific roles. There’s no reason for this and we’re going to hold recurring events where all the AUREA volunteers can engage with one another. Volunteering shouldn’t all work all the time and perhaps that’s another thing AUREA needs to learn.
Project Progress
Our new Projects tab can now be found at the top of our website and there you can read about what specific side projects AUREA is working on. Here’s a quick update on our current projects:
Census - The 2020 Census Report has been published and is now live! We were informed of some accessibility issues for colour blind folks and those have since been fixed. The companion piece is nearly complete and will be on the website shortly.
Glossary cleanup - Our glossary is a funny resource to curate as it’s difficult to categorize aromantic language. With our volunteers, we reviewed all the glossary terms and added, edited, and removed terms as needed. Currently all Uncommon/Newly Emerging Terms have been moved under other subheadings and the glossary volunteer team will next be working on the reorganizing Attraction/Identity terms.
The book - Our volunteers are enthusiastic to engage with this project! The draft outline we put together is being fleshed out and reviewed. They’ve discussed wanting to get to know one another a bit better before undertaking this task together so we are scheduling a time for them to hang out and have some fun.
Inside AUREA - The first issue has been published! We’re happy with the progress we’re making. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.