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- Multicultural Women's Alliance Against Family Violence
Events
MWAAFV launched at Parliament
May 2022
The Multicultural Women’s Alliance Against Family Violence (MWAAFV) was launched to a packed house at the Victorian Parliament. Attended by community leaders, community members, medical professionals, and politicians—from all parties—we shared why this Alliance is important to us and the difference each one of us wanted to make to tackle this malaise in our communities
Family Violence in Culturally Diverse Communities
Sept 2022
The Alliance hosted its first forum—Family Violence in Culturally Diverse Communities – Finding Support and Solutions Through Lived Experience. Attended by more than 50 representatives across multicultural communities, the forum raised awareness of the lack of culturally relevant services in the state. It shone a light on the gaps within our system that need to be addressed.
The central themes of this event were truth-telling and collaboration. We shared real-life case studies to ground our discussions. Our participants identified many barriers facing CALD women when they seek support. The event was a great debut for the Alliance, and a wonderful opportunity to bring community leaders, public sector representatives, and organisations together to discuss this malaise in our community.
International Women’s Day
March 2023
On 7th March 2023, the Alliance hosted an International Women’s Day panel at the Victorian Parliament. It brought together passionate and experienced women from the sector and parliamentarians. The goal was to identify solutions that could be used by multicultural services to meet the needs of victim-survivors from culturally diverse backgrounds.
Speakers included Professor Kelsey Hegarty, who leads the Safer Families Centre of Research Excellence and is a professor of Family Violence Prevention at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Women's Hospital; Ameena Rahimi, a legal practitioner; Sonali Deshpande, the first female police officer of Indian heritage from Victoria Police; and Akuch Kuol Anyieth is a graduate researcher in Crime, Justice, and Legal Studies.
Members of Parliament Dr Samantha Ratnam, leader of the Greens (Victoria), Cindy McLeish, Liberal Party, and Georgie Purcell, Animal Justice Party also spoke at the event.
Conversations on Funding Solutions
Aug 2023
On August 3rd 2023, we hosted Conversations on Funding Solutions, a forum in Parliament House, co-hosted by Shadow Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and Women, Cindy McLeish, and Dr Samantha Ratnam, Greens spokesperson for Women, Gender Equality and Family Violence. We brought together representatives from across the family violence sector to discuss funding for culturally specific services. We also learnt from each other what solutions have worked for our communities to prevent and address family violence. We learnt that for successful funding:
- Our organisations need to first develop relationships with local councils, executives in funding organisations, and our parliamentary representatives.
- Our applications should align with existing programs so we can add value.
- Help is available for writing funding applications and for acquittal from the funding organisations.
There was passionate conversation around solutions that have worked:
- An intergenerational family approach works best to work towards behavioural programs and raising awareness.
- Encourage our young persons and those with lived experience to train as advocates and counsellors. They will add to cultural diversity in the way our services and policies are designed and implemented.
- Community awareness within specific cultural contexts and in-language is a first step towards awareness.
This was a highly informative event and we loved bringing together passionate sector representatives who all shared a goal of preventing and addressing family violence in Victoria’s multicultural communities.
MWAAFV Annual Event
7th March 2024
Our annual event for the International Women’s Day was held on 7 March at the Parliament House, Melbourne.
We followed the UN Women’s theme of Count Her In: Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress. We brought multiple voices across different areas of expertise to learn how to better prevent, address, and support multicultural women facing family violence in Victoria.
Boasting of more than 70 participants our speakers were Dr Adele Murdolo, Executive Director of the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health; Vivienne Nguyen, Chair, Victorian Multicultural Commission; Krushnadevsinh (Kano) Ravaji, Youth Commissioner, Victorian Multicultural Commission; Micaela Cronin, Commissioner, Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission; Julie Kun, Chair, Gender Equity Victoria; Micaela Drieberg, CEO, Gender Equity Victoria; and Dr Mohamed Mohideen, Vice president Islamic Council of Victoria and Commissioner, Victorian Multicultural Commission.