If you’re reading this, congratulations – you have successfully made it to the end of another year! Whether 2023 signified a year of changes, encouraged you to reach your goals, made you reflect or you were just glad to see the end of it, the end of the year resembles another chapter completed in our lives.
For many of us, 2023 has been unexpected, unrelenting, unusual and unique moments. It was the year pop culture made us choose between the two camps of Barbie and Oppenheimer the championing of women’s professional sports and Rihanna rocked her pregnant belly at the SuperBowl. We saw real life people power spark global movements for greater representation and pay through the writers’ strike, which lasted 148 days and became one of the longest strikes in Hollywood history. Along with the rise of “rizz” and icks and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, 2023 has been like no other year before its time.
Empowered Together is proud to be part of another successful year of advocating for sexual integrity via primary prevention. Leading with dedication and passion in a field where more change is continuously needed, Empowered Together has provided a foreground for younger generations and the general community to understand the importance of consent and respect. Here are some of the most memorable and defining moments of Empowered Together’s work across 2023. Welcome to Empowered Together, Wrapped.
Empowered Together kicked off the year with an exciting collaboration with the Inclusion Foundation, a non-profit that does incredible work empowering and supporting the wellness of people with Down syndrome. As consent education should be available and accessible to people of all abilities, Empowered Together worked towards developing and adapting our facilitator workshops to best suit the needs of the participants in a relevant and impactful way. Two of our incredible facilitators, Lucy and Charlotte, led these workshops with charisma, positivity and dedication in supporting and providing the tools for the participants to navigate sex and relationships.
Empowered Together also had the privilege of facilitating our Consent 101 workshops at the Kamaruka Independent School in South Yarra. Specialising in reimagining learning programs that empower students with ADHD, Kamaruka enabled Empowered Together to once again adapt consent education for their students. The Kamaruka workshops helped Empowered Together to continue to expand their onus in providing a sense of belonging to all young people and see effective communication as a must in consent. This was an amazing experience for us to gauge the ways the learning environment helps shape positive and inclusive conversations about consent that impacts everyone and anyone. We are hopeful that 2024 will bring even more exciting avenues for facilitating different members and groups within our local community, empowering youth voices and being part of meaningful change.
Changes in national legislation across Australia in 2023 showed Empowered Together that primary prevention advocacy has made groundbreaking progress and continues to be important in facilitating these changes. In 2023, Australia made consent education mandatory in schools nationally from Year 10 and criminalised stealthing. This legislation can be largely credited to the hard work of Chanel Contos, whose tireless efforts and activism surrounding sexual assault has made headlines around much needed consent laws in Australia since 2021. Sharing the vision of a world where consent is necessary in all relationships and sexual encounters, Chanel Contos has been an inspiration at Empowered Together (we were lucky enough to sit down with Chanel for an interview back in 2021, which you can watch here). Additionally, Universities Australia proposed a second National Safety Survey on sexual assault across university campuses in 2024. As the 2021 data from the first survey revealed that 275 students are sexually harassed on university campuses per week, more monitoring and work is clearly needed with consent laws.
Once again, Empowered Together spread the importance of consent education via our Consent 101 workshop, encouraging students around Melbourne to collaborate and participate in consent conversations. In total, our workshops impacted over 500 students in 20 workshops across the state, including Frankston High and Overnewton College in Keilor. We loved being granted the privilege to lead these primary prevention workshops and be part of the cause for powerful change within the school community. The continuous support of these communities and education leaders proves the vitality of the work that we love doing. The beating heart of our Consent 101 workshop rest on these special connections, encouraging us to build on our solid foundations to extend our message for change everyday.
We want to wish everyone a very Happy Holidays and a healthy, safe and prosperous New Year. Enjoy a relaxing break and we will see you back in 2024!