Inside AUREA - Feb 2022

Written by the Editor Word count: 1340 words
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Welcome to Inside AUREA - where we tell you all about what we’re getting up to. Today we’re discussing the following topics:

  • Aromantic-spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW) Plans

  • Our anti-oppressive meeting and practices

  • Dissolving our partnership with the Arocalypse forums

  • Team members and volunteers

  • Community Accountability group

  • Projects Progress

ASAW PLANS

We’re doing another fundraiser! Last year, we had a fantastic time running our very first livestream. We chatted with creatives and activists from the community. There was an aro-themed art segment and we topped it off with some aro-themed game play. 

This year, similarly, we’ll have guests and art. Perhaps there will be some games again. What differs from last year is the AUREA Q&A segment. If you have a burning question you’d like to ask about this organization, now’s your chance! Here is the submission form and all the info about the Q&A so far. We’re excited for this! We like to know what concerns our fellow aromantics and we want to share this organization with you. 


ANTI-OPPRESSION

Back in October ‘21 we held our first anti-oppressive practice meeting to take note of what we’d learned and decide what we wanted to implement. It was decided that we would hold these meetings quarterly to properly balance our learning without overloading ourselves with organizational changes. At each meeting we intend to review where we stand on our Anti-Oppressive Organizational chart. This chart can be viewed at any time on our website and gives an overview of our goals and progress. 

We determined that most of our organizational goals are in the ‘practiced occasionally/starting to practice’ stage. During our meeting we agreed that we’re doing well when it comes to transparency, accountability, and organizational sustainability. We also agreed that we need to work on our collective liberation and intersectionality. Some of our specific implementation plans included: formalizing team member and volunteer policies, accountability buddies, and a website feedback form. Some overarching practice plans included: moving away from a hierarchical volunteer system towards a community run organization, acknowledging international commemorative dates and events via social media and articles, and partnering with international a-spec groups for articles/events/mutual aid. Months down the line we can confirm that most, if not all, of our goals have been completed or are in progress!

Our anti-oppressive journey has continued with some learning from Indigenous non-governmental organizations and the non-profit industrial complex. We’re taking a break for the month to focus on ASAW and then we’ll be holding our next anti-oppressive practice meeting. If you have any suggestions for anti-oppressive practices we can research, we’d love to hear about it. 


THE AROCALYPSE FORUMS

To our volunteers, the Aromantic community at large, and particularly BIPOC Aros:

Some months ago the AUREA team learned that the main administrator of the Arocalypse forums participated in some conversations that took place in 2021 in the Arocalypse Discord server (please note the Arocalypse Discord server is different and separate from the Arocalypse forums).  During these conversations, the administrator in question displayed behaviors that we found to be in conflict with the anti-oppressive values that the AUREA team finds central to our ongoing mission. We deeply apologize for the delay in our learning and responding to the conversations referred to above.

We have therefore decided to discontinue at this time our official partnership with the Arocalypse forums and the current main administrator of said forums, and will either implement or continue engaging in the following actions:

  1. the AUREA team will keep increasing our adoption of anti-oppressive actions and stance and we recognize we have further work to do (please feel free to refer to our anti-oppression chart at this link);

  2. we will address any instances of racist behaviors within our organization and make sure organizational partners have anti-oppressive values and goals that match ours;

  3. while we have increased the proportion of AUREA core team members and other volunteers that are BIPOC, we are committed to further increasing the diversity of our team, with the goal of adding more BIPOC and other underrepresented voices to AUREA;

  4. we have helped feature more Aros of color at ASAW 2022 and at the spAce Aro February 2022 conference and will continue to facilitate the participation of BIPOC Aros at public events for the aromantic community;

  5. we have been progressively decentralizing our core team so as not to mimic hierarchical oppressive structures, and will continue these efforts;

  6. we will no longer assist with fundraising for the Arocalypse forums (in the interest of transparency, you can find how many donations were collected for the  Arocalypse forums here);

  7. and we are in the process of starting an AUREA community accountability group comprised of volunteers to help keep everyone volunteering for AUREA accountable for achieving our goals. In addition, anyone should feel free to provide feedback to AUREA through the following form here. 

For anyone who may need it, here are some links to mental health resources: 



TEAM MEMBERS AND VOLUNTEERS

We’ve welcomed a writer to the news team and parted ways with another. Arielle has moved from the core team to being a contributor. We hope to continue writing with you in the future! And Akweley Mazarae has moved from being a contributor to being on the news team! Xe has lots of brilliant and exciting ideas that he will be sharing with you in the future. 

There’s some separation at the moment between the core team and the specialist volunteers. Our volunteer onboarder and coordinator have been working on changing this. We’re planning regular socials, the community accountability group, involving the volunteers in the anti-oppressive chats, and making sure they feel appreciated for the work they do. 

As always if you’d like to volunteer, as either a member of the core team or in a specific area, 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, shoot us an email about that too. That’s how we found ourselves with a census coordinator, Nimat, who also recently joined the team and already has some great ideas for the next iteration of the census!

COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP

As mentioned above, we’ve begun putting together a community accountability group. These people, made up of volunteers, will review the actions taken by AUREA to ensure that we are serving the interests of the aromantic community and upholding and implementing anti-oppressive practices. The specifics of the group’s tasks are currently being discussed and policies are being drafted. Much like our quarterly anti-oppressive meetings, the accountability group will meet and provide us with direction and feedback. We’re excited to implement this feature into our organization. The more voices involved in the shaping of AUREA, the more people we will reach. 

PROJECT PROGRESS

AroUQ - We collaborated with the University of Queensland to conduct a qualitative study on aromantic experiences. The open-ended survey was launched on January 12 and we received almost 2000 responses in 48 hours! Data collection closed on January 14, and the UQ research team is currently working on writing up the results. Once we receive a report, we'll be sharing it with everyone!

Financial Record - Our 3rd financial year (2021) has been recorded and updated for your viewing. 

The book - The outline and proposal for the book are in the works. The volunteers running this project have delegated out which sections they will be writing and researching. The socials they held to get to know one another did the trick. This project is well underway! 

Inside AUREA - We had originally intended to make this a monthly update, but due to capacity and scheduling we’ve decided Inside AUREA will be posted every few months or so. 

Papo Aromantic