Tania Burstin, CEO of mycause.com.au, discusses the domestic violence epidemic that Australia is currently facing, and what we can do to help fight back.
This week womens’ rights advocates called for an overhaul of the way the Government deals with domestic violence to stop the rising number of women being killed.
Last week, marked the 34th death of an Australian woman to be killed by her partner, or former partner, this year.
No matter who is to blame, or who should take responsibility for fixing this issue, I think everyone can agree that domestic violence has reached epidemic proportions in Australia, and whatever the solution may be – it MUST be addressed.
More on this: Tony Abbott wants to raise family violence “awareness”… while cutting funding for support services.
A couple of month’s back my team at mycause.com.au were discussing what we should feature in our Mother’s Day campaign this year. It was at this point we were speaking to the CEO of one of our charity partners, Impact For Women, who said that a few years back she became really overwhelmed at Mother’s Day as she saw the endless advertising campaigns of smiling mothers and their children.
“Everywhere I turned there were positive, happy images of Mums,” she disclosed.
“Yet I knew that for 1 in 3 women, Mother’s Day was filled with physical violence, verbal abuse and fear.”
As a wife, and mother of three children myself, this really struck a chord with me. It was upon further investigation that I found out in Victoria alone last year, police were called to 245 incidents of domestic abuse throughout May, with 9 occurring on Mother’s Day itself.
At this point I knew I had a role to play in helping other Mothers who may not be as fortunate as I was.
Not one to always take the conventional or mainstream method of doing things (I mean, I did start one of Australia’s first crowdfunding platforms back when people were still trying to work out what Facebook was – let alone crowdfunding) I thought, why are we waiting for the Government to fix this issue? Why are more than 700 women on accommodation waiting lists in Victoria at the moment? Why is the public housing waiting list up to 10 years in NSW? Why is a woman losing her life every 72 hours, when we actually have the power to change this? Right here, right now.
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“Yet I knew that for 1 in 3 women, Mother’s Day was filled with physical violence, verbal abuse and fear.” - That can not possibly be right!
As the Founder and President of impact for women, I want to say a huge thank you to Mamamia for this article.
Together with Tania and her wonderful staff at mycause.com.au, impact is currently raising funds to create EXIT PACKS to include bond, first month's rent, basic furniture, cooking & eating utensils, supermarket vouchers etc to enable a woman with nothing move out of crisis accommodation and start a new life, with her children, free of violence. Please help if you can at www.mycause.com.au/mothersday
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