This year marks Women’s Health Matters’ 35th birthday and celebration planning is well and truly underway. We are starting our birthday year off by participating in the Canberra Day Appeal fun run! To keep up to date with our birthday events and other WHM activities you can subscribe to our newsletter, follow our social media channels, or check out our new events webpage.
We are currently putting together an organisation retrospective booklet and welcome contributions and suggestions from our stakeholders around special events, reports, or collaborations from the last 35 years that you would like to see highlighted. The team have also been going through our archives and finding amazing pieces of our history that will be shared with the community in the coming months.
Picture L – Women’s Health Matters information line sign from the early 90’s
Picture R – Summer of Respect Campaign bag as part of the Reclaim the Night with Canberra Rape Crisis Centre
On 18 February, I attended Hands Across Canberra’s Canberra Day Appeal Launch at the Canberra Yacht Club, along with many other community organisations and charities, including our friends at the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, Perinatal Wellbeing Centre, Mental Illness Education ACT, and many others. As part of the Appeal, members of the WHM team led by our Director, Corporate and Business Development, Amelia Carey, will be participating in the Canberra Day fun run to raise money for Women’s Health Matters. You can donate to our team here.
(L-R: Lauren Anthes is pictured with Tiffany Karlsonn from Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, Prudence Slaughter from MIEACT, and Yvonne Luxford from the Perinatal Wellbeing Centre.)
The team has been busy the last few months, attending events including the Canberra Multicultural Festival and O Week Market Days at ANU and UC. On 17 March, the Health Equity and Violence Prevention team will attend UC’s Respect @ Uni Market Day and on 19 March Women’s Health Matters are collaborating with BreastScreen ACT to deliver a free Women’s Health Hub event, where ACT women will be able to access free mammograms, cervical screening, and Hepatitis testing, as well as chat to a number of health and support services, including Hepatitis ACT, Bosom Buddies, Canberra Sexual Health Services, Cancer Council, Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT, Services Australia, Women’s Legal Centre, Working Women’s Centre, with more to be announced.
In February we undertook an intensive planning day, setting priorities for the next twelve months to ensure that we continue to deliver high quality research and advocacy in the coming year.
We also farewelled Molly Stanley, who has been WHM’s Executive Officer for just over three years. We wish Molly all the best in her new role.