Our guest speaker for last Tuesday's meeting was a very impressive young person Erin Hegarty, the founder of Mama Respond International.

 

Back in 2013 Erin went to Kenya as a volunteer teacher.  While walking home with a young Kenyan Nancy,  she asked her what did she need and her reply was "a better future".  The issue was around education with 130 kids in one classroom, there were plenty of teachers, just a lack of space.  Erin deferred her degree and stayed for five months.  During this time she was able to get built 2 classrooms at the Noonkopir Township Primary School, through local donations of material, cash and labour as well as using social media to raise funds back in Australia.

 

In September 2017 Erin returned to the same school just when they opened a special needs unit.  The room was very small with no amenities.  It was more of a daycare centre than an educational space and had no curriculum for students with disabilities.  After spending sometime with the kids in the unit she realised she could help them by getting a proper diagnosis and treatment plan for their disability. 

 

Erin gave a number of examples of assisting families with funding and where to seek help for students with a curable or treatable condition.  

Last meeting's speaker was Helen Brady, who is a Domestic Violence Advocate (DVA) working as part of the mobile outreach team at Starick.  

 

Applecross Rotary under the leadership of Lorri Brazier, have been supporting Starick since a presentation to the club in 2015 drawing our attention to the increasing crisis in the community caused by domestic violence.

 

Unfortunately the demand on services provided by Starick are increasing.  

 

Starick is registered NFP organisation, providing multi layered support to women and children escaping family and domestic violence for over 35 years.  They work predominately in Perth's south-east metropolitan area.  Starick has 2 refuges as well as other programs to support women such as counselling, DVA's at Cannington and Armadale Police Stations, Safe at Home, and many more programs to support women and children.

 

Helen explained that Domestic Violence is often called "domestic and family violence" (FDV) because it is just not the intimate partners that abuse. FDV means any type of abuse that creates fear and controls another person.  Often causes physical, sexual and/ or psychological damage, forced isolation and economic deprivation.

 

Starick's Mobile Outreach Service is part of the COVID recovery plan. The plan aims to provide a smoother transition and ongoing support to a woman with or without children, who is experiencing domestic or family violence and who has or is about to exit the refuge environment.

 

Since the Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) was introduced on the 1st October 27.8 million containers have been collected.  Every container collected through Containers for Change is recycled!  Before Containers for Change, only 3 in 10 containers were recycled, meaning the other 7 are either being littered or sent to landfill. 

 

Our partnership with Greenbatch not only takes the containers for refund but also continues to collect and process the non CDS type 1 and type 2 plastic containers.  The Greenbatch Foundation have been doing this for over 3 years through support of passionate volunteers wanting to reduce plastic pollution.  By using Greenbatch as a Container Refund operator they receive an additional 6 cents per container from the Containers for Change program that will support their great work in continuing to ENGAGE, EDUCATE and EMPOWER Western Australians to give plastic a new life and keep plastic pollution out of our oceans.

 

A question often asked .........