From everyone here at GenWest, we want to say thank you for your support this year!
At GenWest, we've faced another year of enormous growth and change. We’re deeply committed to continuing to improve what we do, and doing so in a way that is guided by feedback from the clients and communities we work with.
Listening to the voices of victim survivors and community members
This year has been filled with both challenges and great achievements, and we have renewed our focus on placing victim survivors and community members at the heart of everything we do.
One of the key highlights of our year was setting up two new advisory groups, an LGBTIQA+ Advisory Group and a Victim Survivor Advisory Group. These two groups join the existing Aboriginal Advisory Group, and all provide vital insights, experiences and knowledge that will shape our work into the future.
Developing a better understanding of victim survivors’ needs means we can tailor our service to meet these needs wherever we can. Our advisory groups are supporting us to do this, as well as guiding our advocacy work and providing us with valuable feedback.
We are incredibly grateful to the group members for sharing their stories, knowledge and experience with us, it truly does help make our services the best they can be. We look forward to really starting to embed this work next year.
Transition to the Orange Door
This year, we worked to navigate the enormous transition to being part of the Orange Door network. Teams have worked tirelessly to meet the high levels of demand, while simultaneously learning to work in a new, partner-based service model alongside child protection, family services and perpetrator services.
Increasing the reach of our health and prevention programs
Our health promotion and primary prevention work went from strength to strength this year. This crucial work received a boost in funding for the first time in 30 years and achieved some amazing things with their increased capacity. We are busy advocating to ensure boost we received last year is maintained for the future.
The boost in funding meant that the sexual and reproductive health team were able to double the reach of their programs.
The team saw a 100% increase in requests for sexual and reproductive health education sessions. This meant they could reach twice as many young people with migrant and refugee backgrounds with vital information on consent, healthy relationships, safer sex and the law.
Our health promotion and prevention programs reached about 900 people in 2021-22. In 22-23, they reached over 2,800 people. This was entirely made up of direct contact with community members via training, education sessions or programs. It doesn’t include online engagement, which was even higher.
Thank you!
We could not undertake our work without your support. Our members, subscribers, funders, donors and the communities of Melbourne’s west make our work possible. It is a privilege to work together with our partner agencies, clients and communities as we work towards our shared goal of gender justice in the west.
We look forward to the coming year. After a year of strengthening our internal systems and processes, it is now time to turn our attention outside of the organisation and fight to meet our vision: gender equity in the west.
Wishing all of our supporters a safe and happy festive period!
