NAPCAN

Members of NAPCAN's Youth Speak Out Council Ruben Sherriff, Nooria Ahmadi, and Paris McMahon, will be speaking at STOP Domestic Violence Conference next week, alongside staff member Libby Payne. We look forward to listening to and engaging in meaningful conversations about how we can build change within the family, domestic and sexual violence sector.

A big congratulations to A/Prof Tim Moore and his team at ACU 👏

Exciting news! 🎉 Thanks to Run Against Violence, Love Bites Grants are now open! Run Against Violence Inc’s (RAV) partnership with NAPCAN helps to ensure that every teenager in Australia has the opportunity to learn about what healthy relationships look like for them. The RAV Virtual Challenge has raised half a million dollars over the last 5 years. RAV’s funding of Love Bites Facilitator training grants builds the capacity of communities to deliver Love Bites. This year’s RAV Virtual Challenge has raised $100,000 for the 2025 Grants program. A past recipient put it best: “More trained staff means we can reach at-risk students.” To learn more or apply, visit https://lnkd.in/gNenyaDU For questions, contact madelene.mcgrath@napcan.org.au. Let’s create better futures for our young people!  Applications close on the 13th of December.

Thank you to those who were a part of National Child Protection Week 2024! As we start planning for 2025, we want to hear directly from you. Your feedback will help us understand what resonated, what we can improve, and how we can make an even bigger impact together. Our National Child Protection Week Stakeholder Survey is open until November 23, 2024. Whether you participated in events, used campaign materials, or helped spread the word, we’d love to hear your thoughts. The survey includes questions about your experiences, how you used our resources, and any ideas you have for next year. Please take a few minutes to share your insights – your feedback is essential in shaping the future of National Child Protection Week to keep it relevant and meaningful for children, families, and communities. To take part, head to https://lnkd.in/g3crffjP Thanks again for your involvement and support. We’re excited to hear from you and to keep building this campaign together!

Children’s Week incoming 📢 Children’s Week 2024 will be held starting tomorrow 19 October – 27 October 2024. The theme for 2024 is based on UNCRC Article 24: Children have the right to a clean and safe environment. Listen to Governor-General of Australia Sam Mostyn’s message, and head to https://lnkd.in/gi2C2MU for more info on how you can get involved this Children’s Week. https://lnkd.in/gi7jY-Hg

Last week, the NAPCAN Youth Speak Out Council (NYSO) came from all over Australia to gather at the Australian Human Rights Commission in Sydney for their annual in-person meeting. During this time, we engaged in forward planning, team building, and policy submissions, while also learning from experts and each other. Throughout the week we covered a lot... including Child safety with Merrin Sulovski, working with diverse experiences and how to regulate our emotions and energy levels with Johnny Kieran-Black, campaign brainstorming and development and responding with compassion with Nina Funnell, collaborating on Love Bites material with Jacqueline Webb Marguerite Schwager Libby Payne, working on a policy submission led by Zahra Al Hilaly and a research project led by one of our own members Alice Dolin. We covered some other deadly topics to help support us along the way and had a visit by ACU’s A/Prof Tim Moore and his team and the National Children’s commissioner Anne Hollonds from the Australian Human Rights Commission. The week marked the beginning of so many ideas and projects, and we can’t wait to share what’s on the horizon … so stay tuned! Thanks so much to the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, without the foundation's support the week would not have been possible. We are so proud of this group, and their passion for amplifying the voice of all young people. A big thanks to chair of NYSO Oliver White and co-chair Joshua Morris for leading the week, our CEO Leesa Waters and all of our team at NAPCAN.

We're excited to share that we attended the AES Conference yesterday. We had Jacqueline Webb take part in the panel discussion "Design-stage evaluative thinking: Helping NGOs and grant makers learn to love evaluation from the start" A big thank you to fellow panelists Duncan Rintoul, Luciana Campello, Virginia Poggio, and our moderator, Claire Grealy from Rooftop Social. At NAPCAN, we’ve partnered with Rooftop Social to adopt an innovative approach to project evaluation, embedding it from the design stage to facilitate continuous learning and improvement and a clear pathway to success. Hearing insights from fellow panelists and other experts about their evaluation approaches was truly inspiring, and we’re excited to continue to evolve this critical area of our work to support sustained growth and impact. #AESConference.

Kylie Captain director of NAPCAN's board, and Joshua Morris NYSO chair, were interviewed by Jonah Johnson for a piece in NITV about National Child Protection Week, and what having a conversation about our young people means in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. You can read the article below.

NAPCAN’s new Media Guide was officially launched on Monday September 9 at Parliament House during an event hosted by the Australian Parliamentarians for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (APPCAN). We heard from Emma Macdonald OAM, Senator Dean Smith, Senator Catryna Bilyk, and Zahra Al Hilaly, with NAPCAN CEO Leesa Waters moderating. Developed in consultation with the NT Alliance, these guides provide essential guidance for journalists, editors, content creators, politicians, and educators on reporting about children and young people in a respectful and fair manner. Stay tuned for more information about the guide and how we can all advocate for change to our media landscape, change that can improve the lives of our young people. You can read the guide here: https://lnkd.in/ghFES6jf

National Child Protection Protection Week ran from the 1st until the 7th of September. There were numerous community events, both in person and virtual. A core part of the week was our webinar series. Seven free webinars took place throughout the week, where we heard expert voices and stories from people with lived experience in the area. All the conversations we had, were driven by the shared goal of creating better outcomes for our young people. Here is a video with just a few snippets of much larger discussions that were had. Full recordings of every webinar will be uploaded to our website by the end of today. So, if you missed out on tuning in, it’s not too late to join the conversation. Thank you to everyone who has supported NAPCAN in this week-long campaign, to the communities who brought their residents together by hosting events, to the journalists who took time to broadcast a chat about why these conversations matter, to our webinar speakers and moderators, and to all of the people working tirelessly in prevention and child protection every day. While National Child Protection Week may have wrapped up, the work is not done. We can ALL continue to champion the message that "every child in every community deserves a fair go", by starting conversations in our lives today.