The Northern Rivers now has 10 new ESD instructors after our first facilitator training took place in Byron Bay this year [2023].
To help us reach our vision of every Australian having access to violence prevention training, we created a Nationwide initiative called “Empowered Communities”. The goal of the project is to reach as many communities throughout Australia as possible with Empowerment Self Defence+ Facilitator Training to enable them to service their own communities to help reduce gender-based violence and increase community resilience.
With help from a grant from Byron Shire Council we ran our inaugural 5-day Facilitator Training program at the Cavanbah Centre in Byron Bay and had 10 fantastic participants from wide ranging fields and with an enormous amount of experience. It was a opportunity for us to connect with some people we had spoken to but never met in person and to meet new people from other organisations who are already doing great work.
It was such an amazing experience and we took away such a lot from the collective wisdom of the group. There was laughter (especially the bean bag game that went completely awry) and tears (mostly Mark's haha) but mostly a spirit of collaboration and sense of commitment to the work of empowering women and girls. It really felt like we left Byron with a group of facilitators ready to take on the World.
Thank you to everyone who attended and to Byron Shire Council for helping to make it happen.