Inside AUREA - February 2025
Written by the AUREA Team
Word count: 815
Estimated reading time: 4 mins
Welcome to Inside AUREA - where we tell you all about what we’ve been getting up to.
Glancing back, it seems we haven’t shared an Inside AUREA post for almost 18 months… time flies and we have been busy! Today we’re sharing updates on the following:
Aromantic-Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW) 2025 Plans
AUREA’s annual fundraiser
AUREA’s Non-Profit Status
Ongoing Projects (The book! Media collabs! Research progress!)
Added Team Members and Volunteers
Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW)!
This year, we’ll kick ASAW off with the authors of AUREA’s upcoming book, An Introduction to Aromanticism, joining hosts Sarah and Kayla on their weekly podcast Sounds Fake But Okay on Feb. 16th. An AUREA interview with Sarah and Kayla will also be featured here on our news feed to follow, date TBD, stay tuned!
For each day of ASAW, we will also be sharing recommendations for healthcare providers, researchers, and allies on how to make healthcare more aro-inclusive. These recommendations were collected during aromantic community listening sessions hosted by PRIDEnet and AUREA in 2024. Check in with us everyday on Tumblr, Instagram, or Facebook to find out more.
While we’re talking ASAW, last year, we asked you to share your experiences, including suggestions to make the week more impactful, favorite things to highlight, and what you would like to see in awareness-raising spaces. Start off ASAW by revisiting the responses posted here. Has your experience with ASAW changed since last year?
AUREA’s annual fundraiser
It’s February, which means it’s time for our annual fundraiser! This year AUREA is trying to raise $1500 to support our website and organizational costs. Help us reach our goal by February 28th here!
Non-profit status
We are in the middle of the non-profit incorporation and filing process and are thrilled to share that we now have a board of directors! The board had their very first meeting to work on our bylaws. They have been working hard on all the back end details that aren't so glamorous, but are looking forward to sharing more as things progress - and are so excited to continue volunteering and supporting AUREA!
Project progress
The Book: AUREA’s book, An Introduction to Aromanticism, is nearing completion and will soon become a reality! Get a first look at the synopsis and stay up to date with the latest developments here: https://www.aromanticism.org/urea-book.
AroUQ: AUREA is continuing to have a successful collaboration with the University of Queensland using the data from the AroUQ study that was conducted in 2022. After publishing one research paper, the AroUQ team is now busy writing up another one. The 2023 publication has been viewed over 4,000 times!
Aromantic Census: We’re a bit behind schedule, but we’re working on it. Our volunteer analysts are currently in the data cleaning and analysis phase for responses collected from you in 2023. After this stage is done we will start writing our report. We look forward to sharing our findings with you soon!
PRIDEnet partnership: Since 2023, we have collaborated with PRIDEnet to support their research. In 2024, this included providing feedback on PRIDEnet survey questions to include Aromantic identity. Have you joined The PRIDE Study? The goal of the PRIDE Study is to help improve the health and well-being of LGBTQIA+ communities. Your participation provides crucial, inclusive data to better understand health disparities and barriers to care faced by LGBTQIA+ individuals. This would be a great action to take for ASAW! Go here to join.
New team members
AUREA has onboarded several new team members in the last year and a half: El, Leah, Shannon, and Steph. Here’s a little more about them and their contributions to AUREA.
El is a graduate psychology student who joined AUREA in April 2024 as our Translator Volunteer Coordinator. If you are interested in helping us with translations, please contact us as per the guidelines here.
Leah is Aroallospec and joined us in November 2023 as our Organizational Outreach Manager and Conference Planner. Leah is simultaneously also working hard to complete an undergraduate program!
Shannon joined the AUREA news team in June 2024 and also loves reading about your research ideas when helping us out with research reviews. If you have ideas for our news feed or are working on research development, we’d love to hear from you!
Steph joined AUREA in July 2024 as our Census Co-coordinator (and has been working hard on our census analysis lately!) Steph also helps AUREA with the book project and strategic planning.
We are in need of new team members and volunteers! Especially if you are interested in contributing to the news team or helping to support sharing content to AUREA’s social media. If you’d like to volunteer, as either a team member or specialist volunteer, check out our volunteer page to see what we’re looking for. And if you think you can bring something to the team we haven’t thought of, please contact us!