Every donation, no matter how small, helps A Gender Agenda enormously. Here's what your donations could be used for:

The Website and Email Lists

There are currently few sources of information for Australian sex and gender diverse people on the internet, and AGA and NewCTN currently provide the only source of information for trans, intersex and genderqueer people in the A.C.T. We provide a variety of information, from listings of legislation, through to personal stories of trans, intersex and genderqueer individuals. Our website is still relatively new, and yet we have already started to generate a healthy flow of traffic.

We also host several email lists that provide support and networking possibilities for sex and gender diverse people in the ACT. This is particularly important for our community, because many people need to remain stealth, and so are more comfortable communicating online than in person.

We pay for our website and email lists with donations, and they are administered by volunteers.

Printing, Lollypops and Stickers for Events

What? We pay for LOLLIES with our hard earned donations? Yes, thats right. At events like SpringOut (Canberra's pride festival), Mardi Gras and at various fairs and community days, we have our volunteers there in green t-shirts, armed with lollypops that say "trannies are sweet", stickers that say "Gender Rights are Human Rights", brochures, fliers and pamphlets. We get out and raise awareness in the LGBT and wider communities, about trans, intersex and genderqueer rights, and making contact with people who might need our help.

Books for our Gender Library

Canberra does not have a Queer bookshop. There are some bookstores that get in the occassional gay or lesbian book, but there is no store dedicated to providing the GLBT and queer communities with literature. That means that it is really hard for trans, instersex, genderqueer and gender questioning people to get a hold of decent information when they need it, unless they can travel to Sydney or Melbourne. We have set up our library to fill that void. However, it does mean that when we purchase books, we are usually ordering them from interstate. We spend donations on getting important books for the sex and gender diverse community, and their allies.

Special Events

Sometimes we are able to get a grant, donation or sponsorship that we are requested to use on a specific thing or event. An example of that, is a $1000 grant that was made to us by Pink Tennis, to hold an art exhibition in the Legislative Assembly. The AIDS Action Council also gave us a $1,500 grant to help us buy some extra resources for the Gender Library. We always try to respect the wishes of people who make a gift to us, and that is where some of our special events come from.

Other times, we hold a special event to raise awareness, or as a fundraiser to raise more funds. An example of that was the Butch Auction, where we raised just over $1000 in a night and raised A Gender Agenda's profile in the local community.

Finally, some special events we hold just for us. To provide skills and fun for our members. We plan on getting a professional beautician to come and teach our members about make up some time in the near future. This sort of event provides an invaluable opportunity for folk who might not be so well off to learn skills they might not have learned the usual way as a teenager, and to make new friends, and take some time out of their busy lives.

A Community Space

As A Gender Agenda has started to raise its profile, we are getting more and more interest from the trans, intersex and genderqueer community. We are getting more and more members in our support groups, more and more requests for assistance from people both within our community, and other community groups and organisations who wish to be more inclusive and helpful to trans, intersex and genderqueer people in their membership.

We are currently running most of our support groups in cafe's. We appreciate Cafe's like Tossilini's and Antigo's not requiring us to buy more than one coffee each, while we take up their tables for hours on end, but its far from an ideal situation.

We have no where to meet with, and train organisations who wish to learn more.

We also have in excess of 150 books sitting in storage at the moment, waiting to be covered and put on shelves somewhere they can be browsed and borrowed by the general public.

In order to house our library, and provide our community with a safe public space where they can meet, we need to raise enough money to pay rent on an office or building of some kind for at least a year. We estimate that we will need about $10,000 p.a. for our community space.