Survivor School Update and Advocacy
Overview: The Freedom Hub Survivor School currently supports 52 women and men who have experienced slavery in Australia. In the last quarter we have had an intake of 7 new survivors, 5 from forced marriage, and 2 from sexual servitude.
Our Advocacy Program was huge last quarter as we spoke in three schools, two universities, was featured on CNN and SBS; and had a number of articles written about our work in three local newspapers.
Read more: Our new Charity Manager – Eleni Argy ([email protected]) started at the end of last quarter and has spent some time getting to know the lay of the land. Added to her learning curve has been the on-boarding of new survivors, some of whom have been in terrible traumatic situations, resulting in many needs medically and mentally. Her skills and experience working with trauma and networking with other services has been a great benefit to our cause.
The Survivor School
Our school continues to offer great classes to help rebuild the lives of survivors but last term we trialled an Equine Experience (with Sheez Like the Wind Equine Experiences) to help with our clients mental health and confidence. This was a great experience for many who had never seen a horse or touched one. They learnt how to relax their breathing, so the horse would relax with them, and then to be confident in leading the horse. It was powerful to see how touched they were and changed in such a short period of time. Classes held last quarter included: computers, swimming, English, one-on-one tutoring.
Part of our Survivor Program is to take survivors out and about around Sydney and now thanks to a 100 Women grant we are also doing this in Queensland. This is not only great for their mental health and stress levels; they also teach survivors about our city, gives them confidence to leave the house/refuge; and it creates friendships/peer support. In the last quarter we took them to: Manly, Botanical Gardens,
Advocacy Program
This quarter saw us running 3 seminars. Two were in high schools. St Andrews and Emanuel School built us into their school program. It was great to see young people eager to learn about the problem of global and local slavery. Their willingness to tackle the problem, workshop solutions and engage in our cause. This gives us great hope for the future generations. The University of New England and Bond University also hosted seminars last quarter. They also contributed to our Fivers for Survivors Day in October by hosting an event. Bond University continue to support us with grant writing and trialling some great new software we hope to implement.
General awareness about Modern Slavery and our Survivor Program kept us very busy last quarter. We spoke at a number of business forums, met with over 20 businesses about the modern slavery act. Therefore we had over 3000 people hear about slavery and our work through our event space.
We would really love you to sponsor a survivor’s needs with a Donation
A few immediate tangible needs are: a baby bassinet and any high quality baby things for a new born coming in February / A $1000 dentist bill needed to be paid / and the Freedom Hub School needs a new whiteboard.
Oh and don’t forget it’s not too late to book a work end of year Christmas lunch or party at our venue.
100% profits support our Survivor School. Email: [email protected]