Sixteen days for global change

IN support of the United Nation’s Sixteen Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women project, the Zonta Club of Ballarat are hosting a range of activities and information sessions.

Running from 25 November to 10 December, the theme of the initiative for 2020 is, “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect”.

Zonta Ballarat president Caroline Nolan said although COVID restrictions have made putting on physical events difficult, the team are happy with what they can offer.

“16 Days of Activism is not just a Zonta thing, it’s a global movement,” she said.

“There’s lots of things happening over these 16 days and our organisation, with its objectives, obviously it’s something we would like to be involved in.

“It’s 16 days of raising consciousness and doing what we can to support, particularly in our community and internationally.”

To kick off their involvement in the initiative, members walked around Lake Wendouree in bright orange t-shirts to celebrate the launch of Zonta’s 16 Days of Activism.

After the walk, Ms Nolan said the group also took part in the chalk stencilling “Respect, Call it out” campaign.

“It’s great to be out and about and doing something in support of the campaign,” she said.

“The shirts we are wearing are saying, Zonta says no to violence against women and gender inequality.”

Throughout the remainder of the initiative, members of the Ballarat Zonta branch also planned to take part in online seminars, social media posting and charitable initiatives for a range of agencies.

“We have broken it down into 16 topics each day, and each day we will be posting something on Facebook relating to that day,” Ms Nolan said.

“We have a speaker coming to speak to us about child marriage, we have collections for various organisations over the coming weeks, a bit of a social media presence and work in conjunction with the Women’s Health Grampians and Amanda Collins with the City of Ballarat

“We are hoping that next year will be even bigger, we’re hoping to do it every year.”

To learn more or get involved with the global 16 Days of Activism movement, visit unwomen.org, or for Victorians visit, respectvictoria.vic.gov.au.