Michelle Glasgow with ambassadors of the It Starts With Me. Today campaign. Photo: Supplied.
Curiosity over anger and blame is the message from Women Illawarra general manager Michelle Glasgow as we lead into Australia Day.
In collaboration with Healthier Illawarra Men, Women Illawarra launched ‘It Starts With Me. Today’ in December as a male-driven campaign to address domestic violence and promote respectful relationships across the region.
Ambassadors, such as physiotherapist to the stars Mick Baines, shark attack survivor Brett Connellan, and renowned Wollongong surgeon Dr Bruce Ashford are among the first ambassadors for the campaign.
Michelle said the organisations hoped to eventually see the ambassadors attending key events to promote the philosophy of the program and have a greater impact in male-dominated fields to see behaviour and attitude changes.
In the meantime, she said the message behind the campaign of respectful relationships was one that was important generally, particularly this week with people often passionate about the Australia Day debate.
The controversy has long stemmed from the appropriateness of celebrating Australia on a day when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people began having their land stripped from them.
“My philosophy and how I operate is that we don’t need to agree on all things to get along,” Michelle said.
“There can be a difference of opinion or a difference in belief or a difference in values, but we can still be respectful and get along.
“I think curiosity, rather than anger and blame is something that we need to practise a little bit more in our communities.
“If you find yourself in a disagreement with somebody, or if somebody’s values or belief systems are challenging yours, get curious about it. Don’t get closed off.”
Michelle said since launching the campaign in December, it had focused on recruiting and training up its ambassadors in preparation to go out into the community.
“The goal of the campaign is to engage the good men in our community who are also pretty horrified around the violence that we’re experiencing towards women and girls, but engage them as active allies in calling out these behaviours and promoting respectful and safe attitudes and behaviours towards women, but from the male perspective,” she said.
“At Women Illawarra, we’ve been calling out these issues for 45 years, and yet we’re still seeing a rise in this occurring.
“So, women have done all that they can, but it’s not a women’s health issue or women’s safety issue, it’s a men’s behaviour issue, and we need them now to get on board to promote it.”
She said we had come a long way in terms of educating ourselves about the experiences of our First Nations people, immigrants and refugees in our community.
“Let’s turn those lenses to the women and the young girls in our community too, and get a better understanding of how we experience safety and life generally,” she said.
Michelle said much of the reason things weren’t changing was due to “a degree of negligent blindness” to the issues.
“There’s a lot of, ‘It’s not happening in my home, so therefore it’s not my issue,’” she said.
“We’ve tended to turn a little bit nuclear when it comes to personal and relationship violence.
“We think it’s not our business, and we shouldn’t intervene.
“But it is our business, because the impact as a community that it has overall on health systems, on employability, on housing, on all sorts of infrastructure and systems that we’re all affected by is enormous.
“I think we need to maybe educate people that this is not something you can be wilfully blind to.
“It’s something that everybody is impacted by, and needs to take an active role in addressing when they see it.”
She said when women were supported, it supported a whole community.
The two organisations will be ramping up the campaign this year as new ambassadors come on board, with influential men with a passion for promoting safety and behaviour change invited to apply to become an ambassador via the Healthier Illawarra Men website.
Anyone impacted by sexual, domestic or family violence can contact 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or Full Stop Australia on 1800 385 578.
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