2020 has been hard for many of us, and will no doubt still be as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to expose the pre-existing inequalities which characterise much of the world. But, in the face of this unfolding global catastrophe we know that we need to continue to push forward, with hope, passion and compassion to promote the human rights of gender and sexual minority people everywhere. It is now more important than ever that we stand together and continue to support each other and build a shared faith-based response to human rights violations across the globe.
It is therefore with great pleasure that the GIN-SSOGIE Board together with the Secretariat send you this notification as a current member of GIN-SSOGIE of our upcoming General Members’ Meeting (GMM) in October this year.
As you know, our GMM is an opportunity for you as a member to feed into the direction that GIN is taking and propose any amendments to our Constitution or By-laws. It is also an opportunity for you to interact with other members. After our GMM in Bogota, Colombia last year (November 2019), our GMM this year will be an online, virtual process. We are mindful of the constraints imposed by the digital divide and will thus use technology that uses as little bandwidth as possible.
At the last GMM we decided that from now on we will hold an online GMM every year and that the face-to-face meetings will take place regionally over the a three year period. This decision was taken in part because of the prohibitive cost of hosting a global meeting even if it is only every three years, but also because we recognise the need to strengthen our regional footprints.
Following the same process as for our 2018 virtual GMM, we will run the discussion portion of the GMM over separate webinars according to three time zones – the Americas, Europe & Africa, and Australasia. There will be one slot allocated per language per time zone – for example we will host two webinars in the Americas, one in English and one in Spanish. The webinars will provide you, our members, with the opportunity to discuss the proposed amendments to our guiding documents and to feed into GIN’s strategic direction, and then voting will take place the following week online over a four day (96 hour) period.
Here is a timeline running up to our GMM 2020, which will take place between 14th and 24th October 2020:
- 3 July – GMM Notification and call for amendments to guiding documents – which are available here: http://gin.webfootprint.co.za/founding-documents/
- 31 July – Deadline to CONFIRM MEMBERSHIP or inform the Secretariat that you do NOT want to be a member of GIN-SSOGIE
- 31 July – Audited financial documents and the strategic plan sent out
- 28 August – Final notification will be sent out to members who are eligible to participate in the GMM
- 30 August – Submission deadline for final proposals of amendments to guiding documents
- 21 September – Members will receive the proposed amendments for review
- 30 September – Board will release a activities report to all members.
- 30 September – final deadline for any changes to proposed amendments (by authors of the proposal only)
- Within two weeks of end of voting – Secretariat will send out outcome of the voting
These are the actions that you need to take:
- 3 July – Click this link or reply to this email to indicate whether you wish to remain a member of GIN-SSOGIE or not.
- 30 August – You can submit your proposed amendments for the by-laws and our Constitution.
- 30 September – This is your deadline to have made amendments to your proposed amendments to the by-laws and/or our Constitution.
If you have any queries with regards to the GMM process please do reach out to us at the Secretariat, info@gin-ssogie.org and we will be more than happy to assist you.
