Upbeat intro music
Rebecca Archer
Welcome to The Remarkables – Grant Thornton’s podcast series dedicated to sharing extraordinary stories of individuals who are making significant contributions to their communities.
Please note that this episode contains discussions on family and domestic violence, which some listeners may find distressing. If you or someone you know is affected by these issues, we encourage you to seek support from professional services.
Today we welcome recently appointed Chairperson of Grant Thornton Foundation, Katherine Shamai. Alongside her we also have guests from Grant Thornton Foundation’s newly supported national charity partners Nicolle Edwards, Founder and CEO of RizeUp Australia and from Women’s Resilience Centre, Simone Allan, Founder and Director and Dr Gabrielle Morrisey, CEO.
Welcome to you all and thank you for being part of today’s podcast.
Nicolle Edwards
Hello, nice to be here.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
Thank you.
Simone Allan
Thank you.
Katherine Shamai
Nice to see you again, Rebecca.
Rebecca Archer
Now to open the episode, I'm going to let you introduce yourselves and find out exactly who you are and where you're from. Let's start with Katherine.
Katherine Shamai
Hello, I'm Katherine Shamai, Partner at Grant Thornton. I've been recently appointed as the Chair of the Grant Thornton Foundation.
Nicolle Edwards
Hi, my name is Nicolle Edwards, and I am the CEO and founder of RizeUp.
Simone Allen
Hello, I'm Simone Allen, Founder of the Women's Resilience Centre.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
And I'm Gabrielle. I am the CEO of the Women's Resilience Centre.
Rebecca Archer
To kick off our episode, we're going to jump straight into a bit of a rapid-fire round. I'm going to ask you four questions at random where you can respond with whatever comes to mind. So, Katherine, if you can give us some insight into what you're reading or watching or listening to right now.
Katherine Shamai
I've been reading a lot of random things, probably got about four books on the go of varying nature, but my favourite ‘go tos’ are preferably Agatha Christie.
Rebecca Archer
If we go to Simone, I'd love to hear from you the most remarkable advice you've ever received.
Simone Allen
Remarkable advice is ‘what will you know now that you'll know in six months’ time?’ And that's been a mentor of mine when I've had to make tough decisions.
Rebecca Archer
Fantastic. Nicolle, when you were in school what did you want to be when you grew up?
Nicolle Edwards
I always wanted to be a journalist and write for the United Nations. So, I was a bit of a writer at school, and you know, part of the school newspaper and all of that. So that was always, you know, and that humanitarian side is always stuck with me.
Rebecca Archer
And Gabrielle, what makes something or someone remarkable?
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
Oh wow. Why did I get that one? That's a huge one. I would go back to something that we actually talk about at the Women's Resilience Centre and that's Maya Angelou: ‘People don't remember what you did, but how you made them feel.’ And so, what makes people remarkable to me is the impact that they make. It's not the size of that impact or even the depth of that impact. It could be a moment or a fleeting moment or it could be something massive, but it is remarkable if it makes you take a pause or it made that person take a beat, take a pause and had an impact on how you felt.
Rebecca Archer
Such wise words. Thank you so much to all of you. All right, first off, Simone and Nicolle, you are both Founders. Can you talk a bit about the journey of your organisations? And Simone, we might start with you.
Simone Allen
The journey of it was – it was 13 years ago in the making – but fortunately something wonderful came out of the pandemic. I was running an executive search company, which went into a COVID coma and realised the dream that I had, it was the right time to work on a recovery centre that would be providing long term recovery care for women stepping out of domestic abuse and trauma, and so, the centre began.
The Board was formed on Zoom and being a head-hunter I had good access and also, I'd been a Director of Lived Experience Australia for nine years and on the carer consumer committee for a psychiatric hospital for about 10 years. So, I could see a terrible gap when women leave either rehabilitation or shelter groups, and they just don't know how to dust themselves off and pick themselves up.
In 2018, I saw that film A Star is Born and saw what often happens. It's a sad situation where people cannot step forward and they don't have the right community of non-judgmental support around them. So fortunately, we were to be able to work through the relevant accreditation to become a DGR1 status charity with the tax department. That took a lot of time away from doing jigsaws in COVID to form a really dedicated Board. The Board hadn't even met each other for the for 12 months because we're all in lockdown, and so it began.
We focused very much on financial resilience as our number one program because we knew that was a particular need. We enlisted UTS who did a scoping review to show that there was a desperate need for recovery services for women stepping out of shelter groups and domestic violence situations, and we also did a lot of lived experience surveys, talked to a lot of women and realised number one was looking at financial resilience as a program, and then the second was employment readiness and caring programs just of really connection and community.
So hence the Women's Resilience Centre is now in its fifth year of operation, and last year we supported 507 women in 163 regions of Australia with our programs, our lived experience mentors and our loving community centre.
Rebecca Archer
Amazing. And Nicolle, what about you? What's your story and the origins of this journey?
Nicolle Edwards
We actually, I started stepping into the space back in 2012. I was a stay-at-home mum, my husband… we had a business that saw my hubby traveling around Australia and my, our youngest was two at the time. I received a phone call from a woman that was working at the Gold Coast Hospital, and she knew that I had some small children, and she said, oh Nicolle, you know, we have a woman that has arrived and do you have any clothes that you could share, you know, that you could pass on to me? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, what's the, what's the story? What had actually happened was she had jumped on a train in Perth, and she had a – then eight month old baby – and she had three other small children, and instead of actually going to lunch where she said that she was going to the perpetrator, she jumped on a train, a small handbag and a small backpack, crossed the country all the way across to the Gold Coast, three days on a train, you know, a baby, small backpack, and that really struck, struck with me, you know, and I needed to know a little bit more what was happening for this woman.
One question led to another, and you know, for me, ever since I was a really small child, I've had this fire that was burning in my tummy, and I never quite could put language around what that was. I was born in Zimbabwe, and we moved down to Durban with my mum and my dad and my brother, and for me from a very early age, it centred really heavily around racial injustice, and I would have this feeling in my tummy, and then as I grew, we, we moved to Australia when I was 10 years old.
My brother was 13, my dad had been in the war for 10 years and at 15 my brother was due to be conscripted into national service, and that was not what my folks wanted, you know, and what was happening in South Africa wasn't great. So, we came to Australia, $25,000 in the bank, two small children on a temporary visa. My parents are my heroes, I tell you, and that fire kind of stayed with me right through school, and when I received that phone call from this woman that was working at the hospital, I tell you, and then when I started to hear a bit more about it, that fire became an inferno and it centres around injustice, and for me as a, as a young mum to think about what was happening for this woman that she was so fearful that all she felt she could do was jump on a train and cross our country to get to safety, it just, I couldn't fathom it.
Fast forward, you know, we work nationwide, basically we've created a really practical mechanism, which we sit so super heavily in recovery and that recovery piece with our incredible colleagues and it's super important what happens next. So as an organisation, in that time, we have now touched the lives of 60,000 victim survivors of domestic and family violence. We work nationwide, as I said, 1600 volunteers.
Essentially, we're known for furnishing homes for women and children as they're leaving, and that little first family, that was that light bulb moment for me, you know, that, you know, by the end of that first week we had settled her into safe, comfortable accommodation.
But as we all know, that's not where her journey ended, right? It was, it's fraught with continued threats. So, it's, it was definitely that, that piece in my little journey that sparked some change. I tell you.
Rebecca Archer
Incredible story. Thank you so much to both of you for sharing that. Katherine, I'd love to talk to you about the fact you've recently been appointed as Chairperson for the Grant Thornton Foundation, which works with local and national charities to positive impact their communities. Tell us more about your role and why you wanted to be part of the Foundation.
Katherine Shamai
So, I've been a part of the Foundation since I joined Grant Thornton. It's volunteering and working with community has been a passion of mine since probably my first volunteer role at about 14/15, and that has changed over time. When I was a teenager, it was more sort of hands-on volunteering and doing activities and things like that, but as I got older, it more became, I guess in the governance space, if you like, and really trying to harness how do we make the most impact with the limited resources we have, and working with charity partners like RizeUp, like Women's Resilience Centre is really rewarding in that sense because what we're putting in is not just directly to each of these organisations.
I mean, you would have met regardless of us but bringing people together in the community and forming those links, it really is that management philosophy of synergy of 1 plus 1 equals 3. We can do so much more when we pool our resources and work together for a common goal, and that's what drives me for this opportunity.
So, when the role came up, when our previous Chair – John Picot – retired, it felt like the best opportunity for me to make an impact and do what I call soul work, soul food work, you know, things that really fill your energy cup and makes the time feel really rewarding.
Rebecca Archer
Amazing. Thank you. Simone and Nicolle, can you talk to us about the specific initiatives that your organisations are undertaking alongside the Grant Thornton Foundation?
Nicolle Edwards
So, it's so exciting to be partnered with Grant Thornton Foundation. You know, I think to be, you know, first and foremost to be seen and to see that our work is valued, you know, is an incredible thing when you're working, you know, at the ground level and really trying to make maximum impact.
So, for us, what we know about the impacts of domestic and family violence is the hidden victims, which are the children and young people of domestic and family violence. It was only very recently that, you know, young people have been recognised themselves as being victims of domestic violence. So, for us, our partnership with Grant Thornton looks very heavily around what does that practical support look like for young people. So, as I mentioned before, our homes program sits at the cornerstone of that. Through the three-year partnership, we're able to cover the cost of beds and beautiful, comfortable new pillows and brand-new linen, you know, all of that.
When we think about the practical items that what we do here at RizeUp, that we're known for, we're thinking you can very, you can very lightly think, oh, it's a couch, it's a bed, it's a pillow, but when we delve and we give that a little bit more thought, each of those items, they are anchors for trauma recovery, right?
So, it's more than a pillow on a bed, all right? It's a place to rest a wary head. It's a place where new dreams are created. It's all of that incredible peace that will hold these young people into their future, and that's what we're super, super grateful for. You know, when we started working with Grant Thornton and we were putting our pitch together, they've just lent into us really valuing the work that we do, and you know, I'm so grateful around that, you know, it, it takes the monkey off the shoulder a little bit knowing that we can have, you know, the next 75 beds, the next 75 beds, the next 75 beds, you know, all of that stuff because that, it's all purchased, it's all brand spanking new things. I don't have to try and hustle to try and find how I'm going to pay for those things. So, it's huge, you know, huge.
Rebecca Archer
And Simone?
Simone Allen
Thank you. Look, it's been wonderful with Grant Thornton to be connected to the RizeUp organisation and Nicolle Edwards because we've been partnering beautifully together. Once a woman is settled in a place where she feels safe, we are there to provide really sound programs, particularly around financial resilience, and we're working very closely to deliver regional programs. One of the things that we find is that women in country towns often don't even want to tell their own GP what they're going through because they know everybody knows everything in a small town. So, the benefit of our services and the ability to be able to go to a safe place, a library, a community centre and dial in and do our financial resilience program is really helpful.
We focus as much on their mindset towards money as much as the practical budgeting skills that are required, and we had a number of psychologists overview our programs. We looked at all the programs in Australia and we realised one of the biggest concerns is not so much how do I do a budget, but I don't believe that I deserve money. So, it's more mindset.
So, we work in the first half on the practical tactics of the financial program, like here, this is how you do budgeting skills, et cetera, until they get to know like and trust us, and then in the second half we talk more about their attitudes towards money and how, how can they focus with an abundance around money? So that's really important.
The other thing that we do is provide observers on each program, and we have had situations like we had one particular situation where a woman was like, I don't understand money, I don't know how to, I'm ever going to get this, I don't know how I'm going to get back on my feet, and we were fortunate – we had a mental health nurse on that call so she was able to be taken off into a separate chat just to really provide her with the right support tools. So, we, we are holistically caring in each of our programs, it's not just kind of an instructional learning on, on how to be best with money.
We really care about nurturing the lady. Sometimes we think, right, maybe it's a mentor that you also need. Recently we had a lady who discovered that her personal taxes had not been done for five years, and so, we matched her with the bookkeeper. She was handing in all her receipts to her husband, and she thought they were all going to the accountant each year and in fact they were just being dumped. So that was a monumental difference to her, to be matched with the bookkeeper. So, we're working very closely to see that regional Australia is supported by our programs.
I'm a country girl; I was born in Armidale, lived in Walgett and Blayney, and Gabrielle also has lived in regional parts of Australia. So, we're very much about building a roadshow nationally with a big yellow van to really connect to women in community towns… country towns.
Rebecca Archer
And Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey, let's come to you now. We have got some statistics which don't really tell the full story, but let's have a look at those.
So, the Australian Government reports that 11.3 per cent of Australian adults have experienced violence from a partner and 7 per cent from another family member. I want to hear a little bit more about how organisations like yours are critical to help abortion abolish violence and to support those in need. What can you tell me about that piece of the puzzle?
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
That's a really, really important question/point to raise. What we know from statistics is that it doesn't tell the whole story. The statistics are really only relevant to the people that answer the survey questions and are willing to put their hand up. There's a massive, invisible – like an iceberg – there's a massive invisible population that's not reporting under that tip, and we know that because of the different types of surveys that are done, but also from the services that are reporting far more women coming forward to safer services and more welcoming services than, and asking for help than, say, the police, and we know that there's just a disconnect between 80 per cent of women who experience forms of abuse don't report to the police, and in a personal safety survey done by the government in 2022, it was revealed that 45 per cent of women who were experiencing abuse at that time in that year – so it's a snapshot – didn't access any kind of formal support service for domestic violence.
So that's not the police, not a GP, not a mental health support counsellor, not a caseworker, not court support, not a shelter, nothing.
The larger picture is that people who experience domestic abuse and violence tend to grapple with the issue on their own. They go to friends, they go to family, they go to a second home, they go to their network, they may even go to their employer and almost nobody else for support, and so there's this giant invisible population that we call the missing majority, and these are the women that are not counted in the system. So, when you rattle off statistics that are alarming enough, it's not even reflective of half of the problem that's actually out there.
So, we can easily double it, maybe even triple it, and these are women that, as they get safer, then come to the recovery services, their financial acute needs, put them in touch with a caseworker that would put them in touch with RizeUp, and then we get numbers that don't join up with the police. We see them in our programs because our programs are in recovery and in online safe environments that are very private, very confidential for geographic reasons or cultural reasons or socioeconomic reasons or community reputation reasons.
Women often don't want to extend publicly to how much help they actually do need. It's hard for women to ask for help. I mean, it's hard for most people to ask for help, but it's certainly hard for people to reach out and ask for help in an area of life that is still stigmatised, and still, it comes with a lot of associations that people don't want to associate with or have a connotation with or have their children.
They don't want to have their children ostracised or labelled or, you know, it's one of the reasons – children and pets – are one of the two big reasons women don't go to shelters as well as shelters are full, and so, we're in the space of recovery, which is actually where the cycle is broken because we often say, Simone, our founder's line, if we do not repair, we will repeat.
That's generationally as well as within one actual family experience or one woman's life experience. We do have to break the cycle, and that happens after a woman is safe in that ability to keep moving forward and not go back to either the same relationship, or what we call same relationship, different face, or that economic slide that puts a woman back into making desperate decisions. That recovery piece is so important if we're going to break cycles, change generational patterns, and actually move the needle on this crisis that's in the country.
Rebecca Archer
And you mentioned the word crisis there, which I think is really important, because for a lot of people who might be listening and thinking, oh, I'd really like to help, and not just people, but organisations, businesses, the entire community. How can they help and how can they make a difference without sort of feeling that sense of overwhelm? Oh, the problem is too big for me to make a difference.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
I think for the purposes of the people listening to this podcast, I have two easy ways that people can really step in and be part of the solution. One is that workplaces need to be approachable, askable, sharing information openly. So, it's not just a quick, oh yes, we're, you know, our HR department does the 10 days of leave. So, if you're experiencing something, go ahead and talk to them.
That's not an askable, approachable organisation if it's not destigmatised within the organisation and really go over the top welcoming and embrace and destigmatising. So, things like this podcast start great conversations. The second thing is: have conversations.
Having conversations is how we change culture. It destigmatises, but it also, we know that things flourish badly in silence. We know that when we raise our children, if we don't talk to our children about what they're hearing and seeing on the internet, it's going to lead to bad places.
So, we're telling our children to have conversations with us and us with them. It's the same with domestic violence and abuse. Start normalising, talking about the issues, what you see on television, what you're hearing in the news, what you're seeing in your friend group and really have those conversations with women, with men, with younger generations. Understand how it’s playing out in different generations of relationships. There are lots of things in the media you can have water cooler talks about to do with the messages that we're all surrounded by, and we won't change it if we don't talk about it.
So, talking is a very basic first step for women and men to be able to be part of the solution. Asking women, well, what do you think allows men to listen and vice versa. Women can understand men's attitudes, good and bad, because they're great men out in the world and invite them to understand each other better.
So, those are my two really big things, the workplace because it's almost 70 per cent of women who experience abuse are employed somewhere in some form of workplace. So, it's everywhere. We often say there's no room in Australia you'll ever be in statistically without domestic violence present – every meeting room, every huddle room, every workplace, every movie theatre, every party you go to classroom, you visit for parent touring, nights with your kids. It's everywhere.
Nicolle Edwards
When we think about domestic and family violence, you touched on that before, in terms of, it can be really overwhelming. You know, if we're, if we're sitting on the lounge and we're watching the news or the morning show and we're seeing some really horrific, really regular occurrences, and we're seeing the very worst outcomes; it can be super confronting. We also know you touched on it, it's in every family. It might be not being your immediate micro unit, but it is in every family.
So, you know, I think, you know, when I first started learning about domestic and family violence, and I was... I'm very much a curious learner. So, I need to find out. I asked lots of questions. I've always been that little person speaking to the incredible advocates working the front line. The refuge leads, the coordinators, the managers, like I couldn't hear and learn more about it, and so for me, you know, and then when I'm going back to my friends and family, can you believe this? Can you believe what's happening? Can you believe that this woman jumped on a train and she crossed our country? Can you believe that?
And what really struck me was the number of people that turned away and the number of people that lent in, and in the beginning, I was like, I can't understand. Why are you not wanting to help me? You know, we're going to move the needle, you know, let's do this together. And you know, what I've since learned and got such a deeper understanding is that pervasiveness, right? And so, for me, I come from a sales and a marketing background. Very early on, all I really wanted was to get people talking about domestic and family violence. And how do we do that?
We do that by providing hope and new opportunities, and, you know, you jump on to RizeUp, you'll never see distressing images. What can you see? You see brightness. You see, you know, hope and dignity. You see all of those things, which is a very important tool to get people to lean in and start clocking eyes. You know, we're furnishing between eight and 12 homes a week, and that's not because that's all there is. That's all we can afford, and that's right across Australia. We've got to spread that out, those numbers.
So, you know, we often talk about being, you know, small but mighty – a very small team and a lot of volunteers, but a small team, and I'm very proud to say that I can't wait until one day we're large and unstoppable because I know then what we will be achieving around this beautiful, great nation. That's where people, women should be, feel safe, children should be safe, and the most important piece of information that I heard when I started out was that there are more nonviolent men than there are violent men, right? So, what do we need? We need to stand shoulder to shoulder to address an issue that is impacting so many people and damaging and removing opportunity for the most vulnerable in our community. This is a community issue. We need to stand shoulder to shoulder. We need to clock eyes. We all have a role to play.
Businesses, communities, you know, businesses like Gabrielle mentioned. It's more than just talking the talk. You know, have you got a safe, trauma, informed workplace? Is there some domestic and family violence training like Gabrielle said, 70 per cent of disclosures, and that's all that we know, and what's so important is how we respond determines what happens next.
So, we have immense responsibility not to be overwhelmed by that, but to lean in. How can I help? It's not, you need to do this and you need to do that, and you need to. Let's go home. Pack your stuff. We're going. What do you need from me? How can I best help you? Volunteer with organisations like RizeUp, contact the Women's Resilience Centre and services like it. Lean in, get involved because it will impact you, your children, your children's children in future if we don't rectify it.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
Final note on that is in the recovery space, especially when women are safer and stable, it's so important for women to experience good and kind men as part of the healing journey, and that is a place that I think good and kind men don't understand how valuable they could be, and so stepping into volunteering or having the conversations that allow them to show the goodness and the caring and the interest instead of being overwhelmed and just saying, I wouldn't even know how to start or how to help. So really, that's a critical, not too hard step that we can ask men to do instead of nothing.
Nicolle Edwards
Yeah.
Simone Allen
Yeah, and if I can just tap in there. One of our mantras is domestic and family abuse is not a ‘he’ issue and it's not a ‘she’ issue, it's a ‘we’ issue, and I am doing this for my little brothers.
They were the ones that witnessed terrible domestic abuse and their lives… they were mum's foot soldiers and they really, really suffered. I was older and I could escape, and we are really, really grateful because we do have so many men working with us, volunteering at our shop, helping us with support, helping us with fundraising, and we've just had – it's been wonderful to have so many men involved in what we're doing, and we can only move the dial and reset the dial if we think of this as a we issue.
Rebecca Archer
Nicolle, I believe you've got a really good example of how workplace can influence this matter and also the real power of conversations. Would you mind sharing that with us?
Nicolle Edwards
Sure. So, I do a lot of public speaking and over the years, you know, you get invited to all sorts of different meetings and groups and this particular time there was – it was at a big union – and I would say there was no less than 200 in the room with their high vis, and I was talking a little bit about the work that we do.
You know, my husband, you know, we do a lot of work locally and my hubby was starting to do a lot of help with us, and he would go and help out at the refuges and this one year he was asked to do the safety upgrades to help the service to come in and do the safety upgrades, and my hubby would come home and talk to me about what he was seeing when he goes into these homes. He's seeing hugely damaged properties right here in our neighborhood. He's been greeted at the door by the little 13-year-old girl with the frying pan and she's cooking an egg for her little brother. Mum is sitting in the lounge room completely disconnected.
The weight of responsibility is on this young girl. At the time, our eldest was of a similar age. She's showing my hubby around the house, showing where, you know, dad tried to break in here. This window was smashed, the big hole in the wall. Now, keeping in mind, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, my husband also comes from South Africa. We met over in Australia and so together as a couple, we know first world, we know crime, we know poverty. To see the level of war zones right here in our backyard is super confronting, coming from South Africa.
How do we keep safe at home in a country that is hugely disrupted with violence and poverty? I was saying to the, the wonderful women last week about the one thing that he could do very quickly is put a lock on the electrical box outside. Rebecca, when you last had your, your lights go out in your home, did you look side by side to see if your neighbours were out, or did you just go straight out and flick the switch?
Rebecca Archer
Every time that's happened, I have gone straight out to check.
Nicolle Edwards
Right, so think about that in the context of domestic and family violence and what that could look like if you've got a PUV, a person using violence, waiting for her to open that door and come outside. The commonality across all these homes with this pervasive smell of urine. And there's not children living in those homes, there's young people, tweens, and what is that representative of? That is representative of enormous fear, okay.
So, when I would go to speak where there is a lot of men in the room, that's what I would talk about. What my husband was coming home and telling me about his experience and what he's seeing, what he's smelling and that really visceral level of trauma, and at the end of this talk, this gentleman, older man, got up at the back of the room and he put his hand up and he said, can I ask a question? Yep, sure. He turned to the group and he said, when he was a little boy, it meant it was nothing for him to step open his bedroom door and step out over his mother, who had been knocked out, passed out in front of his bedroom. His mum ended up being murdered by his father. At the end of that same session, Rebecca, after me talking an hour, that gentleman at the back standing up and speaking, this guy comes up to me and he says he's got the piece of paper that had been printed out by the union, and he said to me, I'm just wondering if you could tell me what number to call, and I said, sure. I'm thinking he's about to…. He's got a lounge; he's going to donate some furniture to help us…
He said, I don't treat the Missus and the children very nicely and I'd like to get some help. Rebecca, I drove down from Brisbane that day with hope in my heart. You know, I felt like that was a massive win, and what was super profound for me was we need to create safe spaces for men to, to lean in and ask for help.
You know, there is hope available. I was on a radio... Brittany Hockley was, went into the jungle for RizeUp last year, which is very exciting, and she spoke about some of the things and then I went on to a national syndication and I was talking about, oftentimes I'll say, you know, if you're listening right now and you're being impacted by domestic and family violence, you deserve to be safe and you deserve to be respected, but I also took that opportunity to say, if you're listening to this right now and you're using violence against the most vulnerable in your home, you deserve to be healthy and happy and there is help available, and right now you're not living your best life to get the help that you deserve to have. You know, I feel like it's just super important that we're all leaning in and having some really strong conversations, you know, because we can.
Rebecca Archer
That's so powerful. Thank you for sharing that story. That's the sort of thing we need to hear, and it's great to hear that there's been hearts and minds changed out there because that's so important. This is a question really for all three organisations. What's on the horizon? Dr. Gabrielle, if you could begin.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
The horizon for the Women's Resilience Centre is really extending the recovery programs far and wide because recovery is not funded. So, we require corporates, communities and individuals to help support and help be part of it, and so, we're going into regional towns, we're going to have at least one and then maybe a fleet of big yellow vans and bringing our employment courses and our financial literacy and resilience courses, pop up shops and recovery programs, and we're expanding our shops.
So, we have a shop called the Resilience Circle; it's our flagship shop. This opened last year and it's a community connection point. So, it's a place where people can come in and, and make donations of clothes, men's, women's, children, homewares, but it's also a place where all the staff and volunteers are trauma trained and can recognise, respond and refer.
So, it's a destigmatised space and we plan on opening those regionally and in every state and where the shops aren't in bricks and Mortar. We'll have our big yellow vans so that regardless of postcode, women and families can access recovery from domestic abuse and trauma anywhere in the country. No matter what culture, group they're part of, geographical region they're part of, if there's not a shelter for hundreds of kilometres, they can still access help and support, and so that far wide reaching in all the different holistic ways that we support women and families is what's on the horizon for us.
Rebecca Archer
And Nicolle?
Nicolle Edwards
So large and unstoppable – that's what's on the horizon, Rebecca, and when I talk about being large and unstoppable, what that looks like is to be able to be more available, to receive more referrals. What sits super heavily on our shoulders here at RizeUp is other no's because we know the impact of the yes.
So, for us, it's about continually driving awareness to domestic and family violence, engaging community, partnering with incredible organisations like the Women's Resilience Centre. You know, we are what we, what we know is that change happens when we walk together, and we are individually one little part of a much bigger integrated response.
So, you know, we need the prevention, we need the crisis, we need heavily, we need trauma recovery and recovery pieces. So, you know, I think that's, that's for us, right, driving volunteers, get on board, come and help out, whatever, whatever you can do, however you can do. Fundraise for us so we don't have to say no.
Rebecca Archer
And Katherine?
Katherine Shamai
Really to support what these two amazing organisations do and work with them at a local SRC level to go, okay, practically, how do we get our people engaged to support these important causes.
Rebecca Archer
To finish off, it's been amazing to hear from each of you today. So inspiring and so informative and so important. I wonder if there's one thing that you'd like listeners to take away from today's episode, what might that be? And where can listeners find more information about how they could possibly help?
Simone Allen
I think the statistic that 79 per cent of women do not report violence to the police is huge considering 60 per cent’ of all police call outs are related to domestic abuse.
So, there is this huge missing majority of people not seeking support and they're in our corporations, they're in our communities, they're everywhere. So, I think the one thing to take out is to be mindful of that and to look for signs when people aren't looking like they're in the right place. You know, and it's…it can often be little things like my husband needs to get all the receipts or you know, things aren't good at home. So, it's just being mindful. Just like the R U OK? campaign, the mindfulness around everybody around us and who, who is needing support, and then yes, definitely reach to our organisations, the Women's Resilience Centre and RizeUp because we're here to walk with those missing majority.
Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey
I would add to that, you can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and our website. Just Google Women's Resilience Centre and you'll, you'll find us. You can also follow us on our shop; you can donate. Be part of the solution and the change because it is possible; don't despair. Don't just listen to the murder statistics on the news. That's the doomsday worst case scenario that the media highlights.
There are lots of small ways that you can get involved and make an actual tangible difference to one child's ability to play footy because you donated a pair of footy boots to supporting with furniture, to donating your clothes to a shop so that we can help put clothes on women's backs and raise money.
There are just almost an infinite number of tiny ways that you can make a difference. It's about doing what Nicolle said and leaning in instead of just being overwhelmed and saying it's all too hard and dark. It's not. There's so much light and so much way to make a difference, and so just pick up the phone and ask, what do you need? How can I help?
Rebecca Archer
Nicolle? Katherine?
Nicolle Edwards
Maybe what might be quite nice is I'll just share the story of the starfish. It lends itself to leaning in. There's a beautiful old proverb which speaks to a little girl on the beach and she's bending down and she's picking up a starfish and she's throwing it out to the ocean, and this old man walks up to her and says, what are you doing, little girl?
And she says, can you see all the starfish that have come in off the surf ahead of her with thousands and thousands of starfish lining the beach shore? She says, I'm throwing it back and giving it a chance at survival, and the old man says, come on now, you're not going to make any difference. Look at how many of them there are ahead of you, and she bent down and picked up the starfish and she threw it out to the ocean. She turned to the old man, and she says, I've made a difference for that one starfish.
So, if we're thinking about the people that we're supporting, let's lean in, let's bend down, let's pick up the, the starfish, throw it back and give it a chance at us. You know, get a chance at life. I think when we're thinking about statistics, we get overwhelmed behind those statistics, behind those numbers, that's someone's sister, someone's friend, someone's aunty, someone's daughter. If you're taking away one thing today, remember the human face behind the tragedy.
Rebecca Archer
Beautiful. And Katherine?
Katherine Shamai
There is no way I can top any of that, so I'm not even going to try. You can find more information about the Grant Thornton Foundation on our website and if you would like to donate to the foundation, we would more than welcome it and we'll be happy to discuss also partnering opportunities with us.
Rebecca Archer
If you liked this podcast and want to hear more incredible stories, be sure to follow and subscribe to The Remarkables podcast by Grant Thornton Australia on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions for future guests. Please email communications@au.gt.com with your ideas.
Interested in more technical content? Have you heard about our other podcast series Beyond the Numbers with Grant Thornton? We interview our own experts on accounting, business strategy, industry innovation and economic landscape. A link to series will be in the show notes.
I’m Rebecca Archer – thanks for listening.
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