Board meeting - November 2016

Kia ora. I’m Victoria Manning, the NZSL Board Chairperson.

I’d like to give a brief update on the recent NZSL Board meeting.

The recent Board meeting was over two days on 28th and 29th November. The first day was a regular Board meeting following our agenda. On the second day an independent person came to provide some training to Board members. This training was on governance roles for people on boards. This training focused on government governance because the NZSL Board is under government and linked to government. Governance for government boards is different from being on a Deaf Club board or a non-government organisation board. The training focused on the NZSL Boards role.

Back to the first day of the recent NZSL Board meeting, the agenda included three things.

Update of work progress

First was the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) – the NZSL Board Secretariat – update of work progress. This update on work progress focused on the NZSL Board’s Action Plan. You might remember last year that the NZSL Board developed and released an Action Plan for promoting NZSL over the next few years.

The Action Plan focuses on five priorities. They are: NZSL in the Home; NZSL in education; NZSL access to information and services; Maori Deaf; and interpreters.

So ODI provided the NZSL Board with an update on each of the Action Plan priority areas and the recent work and progress there. The NZSL Board monitor this.

The Action Plan priority of Maori Deaf is not an easy one and resulted in more discussion among the Board with ideas and thinking around how to provide more encouragement and progress in this area going forward. The Board discussed ideas for focusing on this next year.

So at the recent NZSL Board meeting that update on the Action Plan work progress was the first item on the agenda.

NZSL Fund

The second thing the Board discussed was the NZSL Fund. This is soon to open again for applications. The Board looked at the criteria for possible applications to the NZSL Fund, if projects meet those criteria they can put in an application. So the NZSL Fund criteria was discussed.

The Board also looked at and worked out the NZSL Fund dates, that is the date the Fund would open for applications and the deadline by which applications must be received.

Board planning for 2017

The third thing discussed at the recent NZSL Board meeting was the Board planning for 2017, including booking in Board meeting dates and planning what the Board needs to focus on at each meeting. This is determined by deadlines that the NZSL Board must follow, for example, the deadline by which the Board must report to the Minister or the deadline by with the NZSL Fund money must be distributed. So these meetings were planned out for next year.

The NZSL Board also want to ensure it's communicating information on what it does. So the Board has worked with ODI – the Secretariat – to develop a Communication Plan which outlines the communications the Board will do at key points in time.

Thank you.