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Theatre project recognised for educating Casey students on family violence

The Peninsula Community Legal Centre’s ‘This is not who I want to be’ interactive theatre project has received a bronze award in the community-led category of the 2024 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards (ACVPA). The award was presented by Commonwealth Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus at an awards ceremony held at parliament house in Canberra on 12 November 2024. 

The ACVPA recognise best practice in the prevention or reduction of violence and other types of crime in Australia and play a vital role in highlighting effective community-based initiatives to prevent crime and violence before it occurs.

Designed for secondary school students in the city of Casey, the program provides legal education on family violence and forced marriage to young people from multicultural communities. It was formed in response to data showing that teenage girls were already experiencing controlling relationships and family violence, and that some were going on to forced marriages after leaving school.

“The number of young people affected by family violence within our community is way too high,” said Ms Galloway. “We wanted to find a new way to deal with this problem by educating young people about the underlying attitudes that support violence and to give them tools to question this. By using theatre performance with professional actors to tell the story about the impacts of family violence and forced marriage, we have successfully educated teenagers that may experience these controlling situations. This knowledge and these tools will allow them to shape a different future.”

The project’s work to break the cycle of violence and the attitudes which support it was commended by local MP Cassandra Fernando, the Federal Member for Holt.

“For the past five years, Casey has recorded one of the highest rates of family violence in Victoria,” said Ms. Fernando. “I congratulate PCLC for their work in finding creative ways to respond to this problem, not only through this award winning project but also the free legal services they offer to the Casey community. These include a school lawyer program in one of the largest secondary colleges in Casey, which enables students access to free legal advice for their problems, as well as ongoing legal education on family violence, youth crime, and other common youth law problems. Violence affecting young people is an issue that the whole community needs to work together to address.”

The theatre project has been run in partnership with Uniting’s KOMAK program and a team of professional actors and theatre makers led by creative producer Tara Leigh Dowler, with original funding from the Victoria Law Foundation. Additional funding from the Victorian Legal Services Board has just been announced to extend the project to more schools in Melbourne’s outer south-east, which will also cover the issue of youth crime.

“The award is a huge honour for PCLC”, said CEO Jackie Galloway. “It recognises the work that we have been developing over a number of years to find innovative and creative ways to reduce violence within our community. We are looking forward to using the additional funding to extend these benefits to a larger number of students in secondary schools across the outer-south east, where levels of violence affecting young people remain way too high.”

The Peninsula Community Legal Centre provides free legal services across the south-east region of Melbourne, with a branch office in Cranbourne and other visiting services at community locations in Casey and Cardinia.

Schools interested in the project can contact

PCLC at (03)9783 3600, email pclc@pclc.org.au

From L – R Cassandra Fernando MP, Jackie Galloway PCLC and Kirsten Young PCLC