Survivor School and Advocacy
– helping victim/survivors rebuild, recover, and thrive in life.
The last few months have been a very busy time in the survivor school for both Survivor School work and advocacy! We have had 6 new referrals join us since July and they’ve been busy getting involved in a number of classes, outings and activities alongside our other survivors.
Both Queensland and Sydney survivor schools visited the zoo and survivors were thrilled to get up close and personal with the Australian wildlife they had learned about during their ‘Living in Australia’ course.
The Sydney Survivor School also had an extremely popular Skincare and Make-up day in which an amazing ethical make-up and beauty expert came and taught the survivors incredible self-care and beauty techniques. Many of the survivors who attended have since taken up the “Health and Wellbeing” course we offer to learn more about self-care practices.
We also ran a LEGO day in which survivors and their children could explore their self-expression and creativity through LEGO.
The Survivor School has also started running a mother’s group for several of the survivors who have young babies so they can support and learn from each other throughout the parenting process.
Survivor School Zoo Trip Survivor patting a Lizard
Survivor School Skin Care Class and
Survivor School Make-Up Class 
The Freedom Hub has been lucky enough to be selected as a TEDX charity partner which gave some survivors the opportunity to attend TEDX this year. This was an educational day for survivors and staff alike and we look forward to continuing this relationship in the future.
Finsure Women also decided to support The Freedom Hub Survivor School hosting a Paint and Sip in three states of Australia.
Our founder at the Finsure Sydney Event:
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The Freedom Hub also hosted a number of fivers for survivors events including a brunch at the cafe, a trivia night (in QLD) and more! It was one of the most successful Fivers for Survivors campaigns yet with organisations and schools all over Australia supporting our work.
Survivor School Advocacy:
Amelia, our National Survivor School Manager, met with the African Australian Advocacy Centre to present about The Freedom Hub and we are excited to work with them in the future. She also spoke to a number of NGO’s and potential employment partners and is looking forward to seeing how these partnerships develop! During Q3 Amelia was interviewed by Peppermint Magazine.
Queensland Survivor School Advocacy
The QLD team has been extremely busy last Quarter. Here is the long list of things they have been up to……
We held two film screenings of ‘Trafficked to Australia’ which reached over 70 people. We had a gift table and the attendees loved all of our beautiful and ethical TFH merchandise! We were blessed to partner with Zonta to run a Fivers event on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons with guest speakers also from the AFP. The event had 60 people in attendance and the event was a great success which raised over $1000 for our QLD survivor school. We ran a number of Fivers events within the community also including the Redlands Church of the Nazarene’s High Tea for Fivers which had over 50 people attend and a cake sale where they raised over $1000 dollars to support our Survivor School. We also spoke at their church on Freedom Sunday in September and the congregation again loved our coffee, tea, and candles!
The Brisbane team also spoke about our anti-slavery work at the QUT’s QNEST (Queensland Network to End Slavery & Trafficking) event in partnership with a number of other service providers to a physical and online audience.
We attended Lifeline’s Domestic Violence Response Training and presented to the social worker organisations in attendance about the services that The Freedom Hub can provide to survivors of slavery here in Australia. They were all very excited to learn that they could refer clients to us for support if they have slavery survivors within their organisations.
TFH team was invited to speak at a community night in Kelvin Grove held by Village Church with over 30 people in attendance all were very excited to learn ways to help end slavery in their community. They have invited us back to sell our goods for their Christmas markets in December.
Our Queensland Team Leader attended the Social Enterprise World Forum mixer event in September where Westpac Foundation showcased our candles and we were able to chat with other social enterprises across Australia to discuss ways in which we can support each other in the social enterprise space. The Freedom Hub is very grateful to be selected as a recipient of Westpac’s Inclusive Employment Grant.
At all of these events, we have invited people to volunteer and as a result, we have had a number of new volunteer applications.
If you would like to volunteer or financially support our work, please Contact Us: thefreedomhub.org/contact-us