Weekly wrap - 22 September

This week has been one where we’ve been reminded of the importance of building community resilience; one that supports individuals and fosters empathy, understanding and true leadership.

We started the week with our 10th annual Women of Spirit Awards. The event is a great reminder of the amazing work going on in our community by people who strive to leave situations better than they found them. The event celebrated 15 inspirational women who, only through their resilience and courage are making a positive impact on their community.

At our luncheon Suzanne Tunks and Stacey Bransdon were named as our 2017 Women of Spirit. We were also privileged to hear from another inspirational woman, Wing Commander Sharon Bown (Ret’d) who has written a book I highly recommend. These emotional events affect you to the core with individual stories reflecting the transformation of utter heartache and pain to selfless acts and inspirational leadership. 

I am grateful to our sponsors Bond Hair Religion (Jenni Tarrant) and Icon Water for continuing to make the awards what they are. And also to our friend Natalie Forrest who dedicated her time to MC-ing the event and our wonderful Patron, Brendan Nelson who helped us recognise and congratulate our finalists. 

Among the celebration of women, we were honoured to have Clinton McRobert provide our luncheon entertainment. Clinton, your amazing voice was simply perfect for this event. 

As we moved through the week, I was privileged to speak to the team at Callida Consulting about resilience and mental health support in the workplace. I applaud Callida’s dedication to supporting their staff and the community and I thank them for inviting me to speak.

Our paid services here at Lifeline Canberra (which we launched only a few weeks ago) have already hit the 100 hour mark as we reach more individuals in crisis than ever before. We will always fight to do more, a little more on that below... 

In Mental Health training, we were pleased to be able to provide mental health awareness, resilience and suicide prevention training to multiple government departments and the Ainslie Group this week, with wonderful feedback on the importance of the training and the expert delivery. It is wonderful to see so many organisations recognising the importance of this training to ensure a healthy workplace for all.

Congratulations to Martin Fisk at Menslink for a great breakfast event this week, and lovely to see Minister Shane Rattenbury in attendance.

For the next two weeks, and not in my capacity as a representative of Lifeline Canberra, I will be engaging in international conversations on suicide prevention as I travel to the US and Canada.

Owing to the travel, I will be taking a short break from my weekly wrap, but expect to read big news when I return. 

With two long weekends in a row in Canberra, I wish you some rest time to spend with love ones, re-energise and focus on self care. It has been a big year for so many and it seems that time isn’t slowing down, so it is important we take time to focus on our wellbeing and to check in with others. 

Have a wonderful long weekend!