Hey everyone!

GBLUR will be having it’s Winter General Meeting really soon so here’s some info to fill you in!

The meeting will take place on February 24th at 4:00pm in Room 285 of the Riddell Centre building (around the Students’ Union area). We will be providing juice and cookies (while supplies last) and will start just after 4 to let people settle in.

Topics on our agenda include:
Director’s Report – Nathan Seckinger will update us on what he’s been up to lately and what his plans are for the next couple of weeks.

Certificate Ceremony – A certificate will be presented to those who have completed stage 1 of the Volunteer Training program.

Post-CUQSC – The board will present a summary of their trip to the Canadian University Queer Services Conference in Victoria, BC.

Strategic Planning – We will introduce our strategic planning idea and ask the membership to help take part in the shaping of our new strategic plan.

Candidate Presentations – Those nominated for board positions will present a quick bio about themselves before voting commences.

Elections – Those present at this meeting will have a chance to vote for candidates and after a quick tally, the elected candidates will be announced as new board members.

Open discussions – Any remaining topics that need to be discussed shall be brought to attention at this time. If nothing needs to be discussed, then the meeting will close.

We hope you can all come and join us! Those wishing to run for board should contact GBLUR so that we can give you further information. Contact us by email or in person. Please note that our phone is currently out of order.

Hope you all have a good Reading Week! See you on the 24th!

Dan Shier
GBLUR Board

Hey GBLUR Friends,

Here’s what’s happening in February!

CUQSC – Feb 4-7

GBLUR Elections – Feb 24

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Canadian University Queer Services Conference:

GBLUR is attending this year’s CUQSC in Victoria, British Columbia. The conference is being held at the University of Victoria from February 4th to 7th and we expect to learn a lot from the workshops and keynotes. During this time, Dan, Leah, Lisa, and Nathan will be out of the province, meaning that the GBLUR Centre will be limited in the services it can provide. The lounge can still be opened by asking the URSU Front desk to open it. For emergency contact, please email us. So far our trip has been successful and you MAY see further updates via Twitter or our blog in the following few days.

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GBLUR ELECTIONS/WINTER SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING

Meeting info: Feb 24th, 4pm, RC 285

Due to some complications with our last General Meeting, we’ve rescheduled our meeting for February 24th. This meeting will take place at 4pm in Room 285 Riddell Centre (2nd floor, by the CocaCola machine and URSU). We will have an award ceremony, updates from the board and the director, and we will also be hosting elections for 3 new board positions. We encourage you to consider nominating someone (including yourself) by contacting us. You don’t have to have any experience and we’d love to see some 1st and 2nd year students coming aboard. Spread the word and lets have a good turn out!

Greetings GBLUR Friends!

The GBLUR Board and Executive Director would like to wish you all a great winter break and a happy new year! 2009 has been a fun-filled and productive year for us and we’d like to keep the momentum going in the new year with some awesome new plans starting with a jam-packed January!
====SIREN Dance Party==== Jan 16

And what better way to start a new year than with an awesome DJ Dance Party! On Saturday, Jan 16, LIPS PRODUCTIONS in collaboration with AfterDark Events and GBLUR, is hosting “SIREN”, a great back to school party for everyone 16+! More details are on Facebook.
====GBLUR Special General Meeting==== Jan 15

On a more business related note, GBLUR will be hosting a “Special General Meeting (SGM)” as planned. This meeting will include a recap of things that have happened since the last meeting, an awards ceremony for Volunteers, and an election for some new board members. If you’re looking to join the board, this is the meeting to attend. We have scheduled this meeting for January 15th at 4:00pm in the URSU Board Room, Riddell Centre.

====GBLUR in Victoria and DIVAS==== Feb 4-7, Mar 6

That’s it for January! The GBLUR Board will be off in balmy Victoria, BC during the first week of February to attend the Canadian Universities Queer Services Conference hosted by UVIC PRIDE. We’re looking to learn a lot, make a bunch of new friends, and also let the rest of the nation know what GBLUR is up to.

March 6th will be the date for GBLUR’s famous DIVAS Drag show at the Lazy Owl so make sure you keep that in mind because it will be a BLAST! We’ll be looking for volunteers so be sure to let us know if you’re interested.

====Donations and the Future====

The board would like to thank everyone for their support and contributions. We’ve come a long way since becoming a club and evolving into an organization. We couldn’t have come this far without the support of everyone who believes in what we do. We have many more ideas and plans we’d like to play out throughout this next semester. We plan on starting a Podcast show that will be updated every 2 weeks to recap on what’s new and fill you in on upcoming events and news. We also plan on having more frequent, small events to keep us on our toes!
2010 will be a great year and we want you to be a part of it. Sign up to be an official member via our online form, donate a dollar or two, and don’t forget to come hang out in our lounge in Riddell Centre!

Dan

GBLUR

<End Transmission>

Just to let you know, our blog is back up and running after what seems to have been a minor glitch with WordPress. Updates to come

Hello GBLUR friends.

Please visit the link at the end of this post to view a new petition asking for a national suicide prevention strategy in Canada. I strongly urge you to read and sign the petition and to learn more about depression, suicide, and mental health care in general.

Obviously, saving people from suicide is an important issue in tself. But there are other, related reasons why a national strategy is a good idea.

It is more or less unheard of for someone to take their own life on a whim. Usually, by the time suicide is attempted, the person has already endured years of frustration struggling against physical, mental, social, or economic challenges that they simply can’t resolve. The only way to prevent suicide, then, is to develop solutions to the social and health problems that plague society in general.

Studies show that 71.4% (almost 3/4) of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people suffer depression and we have reason to believe the numbers are even higher for transpeople. Gay men, on average, are about 10 times more likely than their straight counterparts to attempt suicide.

A national suicide prevention strategy would have to develop programs that every LGBTI/queer person in Canada ought to be asking for, since we are one of the groups that stands to benefit the most. These programs include: anti-bullying and human rights programming; anti-homophobia, anti-racism, and gender critical programming; adequate care for major and minor mental health issues such as family abuse, eating disorders, addictions, ADHD, autism-spectrum disorders and personality disorders; accessibility to medical facilities and social welfare services; victim trauma recovery; and better supports for coping with loneliness, grief, and bereavement. In 15 years working with queer communities I’ve never met a single LGBTI/queer person who didn’t struggle with at least one of these issues.

In short, by supporting suicide prevention we are supporting mental health and safety in general. Furthermore, we are also supporting strong and healthy economies since business depends on happy and healthy people in order to be productive and efficient. There is really no good reason why the federal government shouldn’t plan for suicide prevention, and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

http://nspscnd.epetitions.net/

your friendly neighbourhood nathan

GBLUR is now more accessible online than ever before. We’ve made several changes in the past year such as buying our domains gblur.ca and .com, signing up for Google Apps to manage our email and documents, and taking advantage of many online networking services to better outreach to our potential community.

Today, we would like to announce the official release of our Online Membership Form page and our Donations page. Our online membership form allows people to sign up to become official members of the GBLUR Centre. Membership entitles the person voting rights, eligibility to run for our board, and tons of other benefits.

Donations allow anyone with a credit or debit card to make donations to GBLUR using PayPal. Best of all, we can take donations from anywhere PayPal works, making international donations a possibility. We even offer subscription-style donations that let you “set it, and forget it”; you never have to worry about forgetting to donate.

The board is also very enthusiastic to announce that we will be starting a GBLUR Podcast show in the very near future. We’re currently working out the kinks and planning our episodes. We would like to discuss current events, GBLUR updates, and give you a better idea of what we do here at GBLUR. Look forward to seeing a new Podcast button on our homepage.

That is your Sunday Cheesecake update! Have a good week!

THANKS everyone who attended our MGM. The feedback was great and we have a lot of great ideas to go through. Your feedback is going to greatly impact what we choose to do next so keep the input flowing.

Speaking of things we’re planning, the board is considering starting a Podcast series where we can talk about current issues, board projects, and GBLUR news. Stay tuned!

The minutes for our Monthly General Meeting (Nov 13, 09) are now available online.

Please click here for minutes.

Thanks to GLOW (at U Waterloo), our resources page now has a link to most Queer support and community centres in Canada’s universities. The resources page has also been updated to feature categories ranging from Local (Regina) to National (Canada) as well as GBLUR specific resources and other directories. This will still grow as more resources become available, and it’s encouraged that others contribute to our list.

We will also post our services once we’ve compiled a list and polished it for public viewing.

Please contribute. Thank you everyone!

“What does the membership want from us?”

This is the question we’re asking you. We want to know what you would like to see from GBLUR in the upcoming and long term future and this will be the focus of the upcoming Monthly General Meeting.

The GBLUR Board has scheduled our next Monthly General Meeting for Friday, November 13th, 2009. The following is our agenda as of October 28th.

Agenda:
-Update for the members on the board’s activities
-donation option online
-membership form sign-up online
-Volunteer Update
-What does the membership want from us?
-Update from Director

The meeting will be held in the URSU Boardroom (Riddell Centre Room 221) and will start at 4:00pm. Everyone is welcome to join so please come and attend!!

Dan Shier
GBLUR Board