2022 AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award to be introduced tonight
The 2022 nationwide winner and runner-up of the AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award will probably be introduced tonight at a dinner on the Nice Corridor, Parliament Home in Canberra. The occasion returns after a two-year hiatus.
The AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award is Australia’s main award empowering and celebrating the inclusive and brave management of girls concerned in Australia’s rural and rising industries, companies, and communities, now and into the longer term.
The state finalists are:
Kimberley Furness
Victoria
Kimberley Furness understands the status of the AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award – having interviewed many a state/territory finalist and winner herself.
The Victorian journalist and founding father of OAK Journal is keen about telling the tales of girls dwelling in regional and rural Australia – launching her quarterly print journal from her residence in Bendigo in 2017 as a platform to have fun feminine changemakers exterior metropolitan areas.
The mother-of-four began her journalism journey at simply 15 when she accomplished her Yr 10 work expertise as a reporter for The Nhill Free Press. Since then, she’s labored as a reporter for the Bendigo Advertiser, in magnificence remedy, company communications, copywriting, and social media consultancy.
Kimberley’s perception that “you can’t be what you can’t see” and her craving to see extra regional and rural girls represented in print media stays her biggest profession ambition. The businesswoman now employs writers, photographers and designers from throughout nation Australia who assist deliver every difficulty of OAK to life.
The editor would use her $15,000 Westpac grant in the direction of an audio model of the journal, using radio journalists primarily based within the bush to create and produce the content material.
Kylie Jones
Northern Territory
Kylie Jones understands the significance of teamwork and neighborhood in empowering folks to be the perfect model of themselves. The previous Tasmanian cricketer and outback schoolteacher is a passionate advocate for distant studying and a champion for the mother and father and governesses who tackle the function of training the subsequent era – usually with out enough assist.
Drawing on her years of expertise in major training, in 2020, Kylie launched RAISEducation – a not-for-profit organisation with the purpose of constructing a neighborhood that helps distant educators to really feel related, empowered and assured in regards to the classes they ship. In doing so, it goals to make the distant classroom a spot that fosters a love of studying in college students.
Two years on and RAISEducation gives evidence-based studying assist to pre-school and primary-aged youngsters in 40 remoted households throughout WA, NT, SA and Qld.
On the coronary heart of the organisation is Kylie’s drive to make sure her providers stay free for educators searching for steerage by way of the RAISEducation packages.
“Geographically remoted households already face so many challenges and prices to teach their youngsters. We consider skilled, evidence-based academic assist ought to be accessible to anybody who wants it, no matter their monetary state of affairs,” Kylie defined.
Because the 2022 NT AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award winner, Kylie would commit her $15,000 Westpac Grant to construct model consciousness and additional set up RAISEducation’s donor pathway, working with supporters who equally recognise the advantages of serving to remoted households to get probably the most out of their early training expertise.
Louise O’Neill
Western Australia
Residing on the land has many upsides, however rural communities usually lack much-needed well-being providers. Mum-of-two and university-qualified sports activities therapist Louise O’Neill needs to repair that, with Farm Life Health – an internet neighborhood that is reworking the bodily and psychological well being of individuals in rural Australia.
“I’ve witnessed too many individuals endure as a consequence of decreased well being,” Louise mentioned. “What drives me is the truth that I do know we want – and deserve – higher.”
Farm Life Health runs 30-minute reside, on-line group health courses, providing a fast, protected, and efficient manner for folks of all health ranges to train – from the consolation of their very own houses. One-on-one periods are additionally accessible to these searching for particular person teaching.
However Farm Life Health is greater than only a sweat session. A soon-to-be college graduate of psychology and counselling, Louise understands that optimising rural well being means taking care of the psychological facet, too.
“Our members participate in digital workshops and talks about psychological well being and wellbeing,” Louise defined. “Collectively, we talk about issues just like the significance of purpose setting, discovering steadiness, and [reshaping] our emotional relationship with meals.”
Farm Life Health is tapping an unmet want.
“The women and men who have interaction with me on a one-on-one foundation usually tend to speak than practice,” Louise mirrored.
“Farm Life Health is a neighborhood in its personal proper. We assist, validate, and have fun with one another, and we’re there for one another when the times are usually not so nice. Members thrive on this neighborhood; everybody feels protected and trusts that our courses and workshops empower life-changing experiences.
“Younger youngsters rising up on the land want sturdy, optimistic function fashions. Farm Life Health will help create these – and alter the stats round psychological well being and farming.”
If profitable, Louise would use her $15,000 Westpac bursary to scale the Farm Life Health neighborhood and hone her pitch to the enterprise and native authorities sector. She would additionally use her funding to higher articulate her model and develop a user-friendly web site that gives a devoted on-line residence for members.
Robyn Verrall
South Australia
Meals insecurity is greater than only a idea for Robyn Verrall. The 2022 SA AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award winner is aware of first-hand the unease of stretching budgets to afford the weekly grocery store from her time as a younger single mum.
The Keith-based beef and lamb producer is now serving to deal with meals insecurity, working in partnership with Kere to Nation (pronounced Carry to Nation), offering mentoring and logistics assist to the group’s CEO, Jessica Wishart.
The First Nations-led organisation gives inexpensive meat packages to distant Indigenous communities in Central Australia, the place locals are spending as much as 80 per cent of their revenue on inflated meals costs, and a few are going with out meals altogether.
Robyn would use a part of her $15,000 AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award grant on a custom-made cellular cool room, to allow weekly meat distribution to Aboriginal communities.
“You’ll be able to’t plan for the longer term when you might have an empty abdomen. It simply should not be acceptable that so many individuals are going hungry,” Robyn mentioned. “Kere to Nation is Aboriginal fashioned and led by way of Jessica’s imaginative and prescient — I am simply making an attempt to be a part of the answer.”
Josie Clarke
New South Wales
Josie Clarke is on a mission to vary perceptions of individuals with a incapacity and their capability to work in agriculture – and create alternatives for them to be concerned within the sector they love.
Capability Agriculture is a labour of affection; Josie’s response to the devastating truck accident that left her father a paraplegic and took him off the farm and right into a desk job.
Confronted with the fact of life on the land for folks with a incapacity, Josie wished extra for folks like her dad. She set about giving them a voice.
An internet neighborhood with over 2,000 members from Australia and overseas, Capability Agriculture raises consciousness and alternatives for these with disabilities within the agricultural sector. An interactive on-line platform, it welcomes people, relations and agribusinesses to share their employment experiences; the diversifications or helps which have enabled folks with disabilities to maintain working within the sector; and to voice the adjustments they wish to see made to make agriculture a extra inclusive office.
“We have to guarantee these unimaginable voices are being heard,” Josie mentioned.
From the “Phrases of Recommendation” to the “Take Overs” – a ‘day within the life’ snapshot of incapacity – Capability Agriculture is amplifying the voices of those that have lengthy been under-represented within the sector.
With submit reaches of as much as 375,000 viewers, Capability Agriculture is difficult and altering perceptions round agricultural profession alternatives for folks with a incapacity.
“Capability Agriculture just isn’t solely exhibiting that agriculture generally is a really inclusive and accessible profession possibility for anybody, together with these with incapacity, but additionally making a optimistic, proactive dialog across the capability of individuals with incapacity,” Josie mentioned.
“Round 75 per cent of individuals do not disclose their incapacity to an employer, and, to me, that exhibits a worry that possibly they will not be employed in the event that they let it’s identified they want some additional assist. We have to change that.”
Because the 2022 NSW AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award winner, she would use her $15,000 Westpac bursary to create an accessible Capability Agriculture web site – together with an employment web page that highlights inclusive agricultural jobs – and ship extra awareness-raising initiatives that reach this vital dialog.
Stephanie Trethewey
Tasmania
Stephanie Trethewey is on a mission to get rid of the crippling isolation that may accompany rural motherhood.
It is a subject near the center of the previous metropolis woman and broadcast journalist, whose transfer from Melbourne to a small farming neighborhood in Tasmania’s northwest noticed her confront firsthand the isolation that rural mums can really feel.
“My struggles as a rural mom fuelled my need to create significant change for rural mums throughout Australia,” Steph defined.
The Motherland podcast was born. Sharing genuine tales of mums on the land, Motherland struck a nerve with girls for its uncooked, unfiltered illustration of motherhood. Two years on, the weekly podcast has amassed over 330,000 downloads and profiled over 130 rural moms.
However Steph wasn’t performed. Alarmed that greater than half of her listeners had no entry to moms teams, she set about giving each rural mum the chance to hitch one.
Her resolution was Motherland Village – an internet facilitated program that connects rural mums by way of ‘digital villages,’ the place they share in video calls, a personal Fb chat room, and weekly actions that encourage deeper connection.
With 9 digital villages already on-line, Motherland Village is making its mark on rural motherhood. However Steph has a good larger purpose: connecting with each hospital in Australia that delivers rural infants. Katherine Hospital within the Northern Territory is first to signal on, recognising the great potential to enhance psychological well being outcomes for the 300 mums who give delivery there annually.
“We’re within the midst of a loneliness epidemic that’s solely growing psychological well being struggles for brand new mums within the bush. My imaginative and prescient is to make sure no rural mum in Australia is left behind,” Steph mentioned.
Because the 2022 Tasmanian AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award winner, Steph would use her $15,000 Westpac grant to put money into an internet platform which can home new program content material, Motherland Village hospital toolkits, and a Communicator Coordinator function for a rural mom to hitch her workforce.
Rebecca Bradshaw
Queensland
Little one well being nurse Rebecca Bradshaw is keen about entry to well being providers — irrespective of the postcode. Specialising in little one well being from nought to 5, Rebecca launched her on-line telehealth platform, Rural Little one Well being, originally of 2021 — designed to offer rural and distant mother and father the assist and training they should elevate their households.
Residing on a beef cattle property close to Queensland’s Jackson together with her diesel mechanic husband, Clancy, and their two younger sons, Rebecca is aware of simply how isolating elevating a household within the bush could be.
The nurse gives digital assist networks, dad or mum teams and webinars, in addition to one-on-one digital appointments to assist with every little thing from breastfeeding and well being considerations to sleep and settling.
Rebecca was impressed to change into a nurse when she was simply 9 years previous, after her father suffered a critical farming accident. Watching how the nurses helped her dad get well, Rebecca grew decided to assist others in a similar way.
If profitable, the nurse plans to place her $15,000 Westpac grant from the 2022 QLD AgriFutures Rural Girls’s Award in the direction of organising a web site, gaining enterprise and facilitator teaching and delivering a pilot parenting program to rural households.
