The Women's Justice Network is dedicated to supporting women and girls to stay out of prison if they've been there and keep away from prison if they are doing risky things as teenage girls.
Our tradition has been to run a mentoring program for adult women in the Sydney Metropolitan Area, but we recently added two exciting new initiatives--expansion to the Central Coast, and a youth program called "Healing from Within." We have mentors all trained up and ready for the Central Coast program, and Healing from Within has done really sensitive work with teenage girls--for example, using art to help them understand themselves better.
And then came coronavirus. The fundraising activities that we had counted on to keep these programs running had to be called off. While the generosity of many supporters in combination with the JobKeeper scheme will enable us to keep our programs going until September, the future after that looks quite uncertain.
For the sake of all our women--the women in the core program battling with social isolation after they leave jail, the young girls whose whole future could be changed by engagement with our program, the women on the Central Coast who stand to benefit from matching with a mentor--please dig deep and donate what you can!