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Tag: Womens’ Community Shelters

How to stop domestic violence before it even begins

The time for token gestures and endless discussions about the physical, emotional psychological and financial costs of violence against women and the impact this has on individuals, families and communities has long passed.

In Australia, one woman every week dies at the hands of her partner. According to Our Watch, a not for profit organisation aiming to engage the community in action to prevent violence against women and their children, the combined health, administration and social welfare costs of violence against women is estimated to be $21.7 billion a year.

We must seek out new, creative ways forward.

And we must start walking the talk.

Women’s Community Shelters sees first-hand the pain and wasted potential behind the much-discussed family violence statistics. Since 2013 they have established six shelters in NSW and accommodate up to 100 women and children fleeing violence every night.

Yet they’re desperate to make their services redundant.

CEO Annabelle Daniel says: “Make no mistake, we are a vital service, but we’d like nothing more than to be able to eventually close our doors. We want to demonstrate that building capacity and providing education at the local level, and providing a practical application for this learning, will work to reduce domestic violence, provide channels for early intervention, and enhance crisis outcomes for local women and children.”

To this end, WCS have now entrusted me to launch their new education initiative, Walk The Talk, which is based on a pilot project I first ran in 2015 as a pro-bono board member for my local women’s refuge.

Phase one of the program involves my Enlighten Education team speaking to high school students about respectful relationships, teaching them conflict resolution skills, and inspiring them to be change makers. No lecturing. No scaremongering. Rather, it’s a strength-focused, inclusive program for both genders filled with laughter and connection.

The initial education component is then followed up with an opportunity for students to practically apply their learning; they are invited to adopt their local refuge.

Young people will support the work of these shelters through helping with fund-raising, assisting with raising community awareness, and volunteering at key events.

Capture their hearts and their minds, and hands will follow.

Already 12 schools (Catholic, independent and government) have committed to participating.

The 187 teens we launched the program with earlier this week in North West Sydney could not wait to “walk the talk” and put everything they learnt with my team into action by brainstorming ways in which they could help their local refuge, The Sanctuary.

I was particularly touched by the 15-year-old young man who was keen to call his Nanna.

He said: “She really does the best knitting. I know she’d knit blankets and toys for us. I can talk to her tonight?”

Then there were the groups who excitedly brainstormed possibilities ranging from the practical (setting up a box at the canteen so everyone can put their change in it) to the creative (painting art works for the women to take with them when they transition out and into their own new homes).

Their Year Advisor and I were both almost in tears of pride and possibility.

 

Dannielle Miller presented her Walk the Talk program at Oakhill College. She’s pictured with students Adam Taras (left) and Ryan Symons. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Statistically, we were well aware that within this cohort there will be kids who are currently directly affected by domestic violence; this was an opportunity to help reduce the stigma surrounding this, and an exercise that helped give them back a sense of their own agency.

I was heartened too by the young teen girl who told me she was going home tonight to teach her little sister everything she learned: “We need to pass these empowering messages on! We can solve hard problems!”

Yes. You can. As an educator who has spent almost 30 years teaching teens, I’ve always believed that if engaged in the right way, young people can (and will) change the world.

So when the teens who decided they wanted to build a vegetable garden to sell the produce questioned me on how helpful this might be as it would take a long time for their crop to grow, I smiled and reassured them they should simply go ahead and plant the seeds.

This article was first published by The Daily Telegraph, 22/2/19

Walk The Talk update – Phase 1, the student in-school delivery component, has now been completed to huge acclaim! I was really thrilled with the phenomenal feedback from the student participants. We have had almost 2,000 students from 15 schools complete the half-day workshop. 100% said they’d recommend it to other students, and (on average) over 97% of both boys and girls rated it as either Very Good, or Excellent! It’s safe to say they were both educated, and inspired. 

Phase 2 is now happening with schools completing their own projects to assist their local refuge. We’ve already had fund raising drives including sausage sizzles and Mother’s Day stalls and large numbers of students signing up to volunteer to help at events.

 

 

Gratitude a golden ticket

Employers who think that paying staff well is enough to ensure their loyalty are in for a rude awakening — especially if they are hiring millennials.

New research conducted by a US human resources company shows that 66 per cent of all workers say they’d leave their job if they didn’t feel appreciated, and 77 per cent of those aged in their 20s say they’d walk out on an ungrateful employer.

It seems gratitude is the secret weapon in the battle to retain talent. Thankfulness, however, has also been linked to everything from strengthened relationships, to decreased absenteeism, to increased productivity.

Professor Robert Emmons, a leading researcher on gratitude, believes that far from being something employers can add to the bottom of the to-do list, focusing on how they can best foster appreciation is the key to developing positive workplace cultures.

“Most of our waking hours are spent on the job, and gratitude, in all its forms, is a basic human requirement,” Emmons told Stephanie Vozza in Fast Company. “Gratitude is the ultimate performance-enhancing substance at work.”

Aren’t cash bonuses enough to make staff feel appreciated? It seems money doesn’t always speak the language staff most need to hear. There is overwhelming evidence that performance-related pay can in fact be counter-productive and lead to a reduction in an employee’s natural desire to feel pleasure from completing a task.

Smart employers know that regular praise and more personalised tokens of gratitude are just as effective. From company-wide emails sent to staff acknowledging outstanding individual contributions, to handwritten thank you cards, to celebratory events organised not just for staff but for their families too — it seems frequency and authenticity matter more than the monetary value of the gesture.

Connecting to causes that staff care about is also enormously powerful. The Macquarie Group Foundation encourages employees to identify local causes that matter to them, and offers to match their donations and fundraising efforts.

This year, Division Director Terence Kwan’s team elected to work with Women’s Community Shelters, a charity that partners with communities to establish domestic violence refuges and house homeless women.

Apart from raising enough funds to support a shelter to run for 12 months, Kwan and his colleagues helped in more practical ways too. They rolled up their sleeves and offered unskilled support by physically helping WCS move offices, but also put their considerable professional expertise to use. Two team members, a lawyer and a operational risk consultant, joined the board of Bayside, a new refuge opening in southeast Sydney.

The partnership has helped foster a deep sense of connection within Kwan’s division. He notes that “it’s been an incredibly powerful way for me to learn more about my staff’s capabilities, about what motivates them, and to build trust.”

Dr Natalie Ferres, Chief Connection Officer at management consultancy Bendelta, believes that “thankfulness effects the bottom line. Not all workplaces realise how important it is for the leadership to show gratitude, but smart ones are starting to actively cultivate this and seek out leaders who intrinsically understand the importance of expressing appreciation in meaningful ways”.

It’s not just staff who can benefit from a little gratitude, if you want appreciative children like Charlie Bucket, encourage gratitude practices. (Pic: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

In my work teaching gratitude skills to schoolchildren, I’ve observed parents and teachers are eager to encourage gratitude practices as they believe these will lead to happier, less entitled children — that it will breed more young people who are like the ever-appreciative Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than the “I want it now!” foot stamping Veruca Salt.

 Yet teaching thankfulness offers an additional, unexpected benefit — it prepares our young people for future professional success. It helps ensure our future leaders know how to create the type of work environments that will be both valued by workers, and that will add value to communities.

The eccentric Willy Wonka may have made his most astute and progressive management decision when he bequeathed his beloved chocolate factory to Charlie — after first testing all the golden tickets holder’s gratitude credentials.

This post was first published by The Daily Telegraph, 19/8/17.   To enquire about having me talk to your students about gratitude, please email: enquiries@enlighteneducation.com 

Time for solutions not more talk

Regular readers will know I have spent the past six months as a volunteer Board Director for a new women’s shelter that is opening in Sydney’s northwest, The Sanctuary. Like most Australians, I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the headlines about women dying at the hands of their partners. In my work with teen girls, I hear more and more stories about young girls who are already trapped in relationships that are dangerous. My team of presenters at Goodfellas report the young men they work with also express concern about the men in their lives who make home a frightening place. 

Part of the solution lies in educating youth and broadening awareness through my writing and work in the media. My more hands-on work at The Sanctuary is another more practical part of the way forward.

I’m  happy to do everything from running our social media, to writing media releases, to helping with fundraising. But I am particuarly proud of two of the initiatives I’ve instigated for this refuge. One is The Sanctuary’s partnership with local boys’ college Oakhill. The other is connecting our work to the broader community through the establishment of an Ambassador program. Here our Ambassador Sarrah Le Marquand explains why this connection matters to her.  This guest post was first published in The Daily Telegraph 5/4 and posted online at RendezView.  

Ambassadors Maggie Dent (far left) and Sarrah Le Marquand ( far right) with Sanctuary Chair Yvonne Keane and myself.
Ambassadors Maggie Dent (far left) and Sarrah Le Marquand ( far right) with Sanctuary Chair Yvonne Keane and myself. Photo by Hills Shire Times.

It might sound a bit rich coming from someone who writes and speaks for a living, but talk alone is cheap. Heightened awareness of certain issues is vital, but unless that awareness eventually translates into action then words are just words.

Which is why, at a time when certain aspects of the national discussion regarding domestic violence threaten to descend into a he said/she said slanging match, it is on-the-ground measures and community solutions that are making a real impact.

Late last week I had the privilege of touring The Sanctuary, a new shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence that will open in Sydney’s northwest suburb of Castle Hill this week.

A state of the art facility equipped to provide three months of crisis accommodation for six women and their young families, The Sanctuary is a collaboration between the local community and Women’s Community Shelters that has become a reality despite no government funding.

To see first-hand the generosity of volunteers, including welcome packs for each family put together by male students from a nearby high school, is to see first-hand the triumph of action over talk.

There’s no navel-gazing lectures and petty point scoring on domestic violence here. Just good men and women making a real difference in the lives of victims.

Sarrah Le Marquand also spoke about her visit on Radio 2UE. You may listen here: 

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