JACINTA Lenehan wants young women to know they are capable of achieving anything.
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The South West Healthcare health promotion officer has been chosen as the first of 52 local women to be honoured in the inaugural Women of Warrnambool event on December 1.
The committed respite foster carer is using the opportunity to help spread a positive message to the city’s women in a hope that they be seen as valued and safe from violence in any form.
The event will see the 52 women immortalised as cardboard cutouts representing the number of women killed from domestic or family violence each year in Australia. The 1.5 metre cutouts will be displayed on Warrnambool’s Civic Green with a photograph of the nominated woman and a written profile attached to each.
Warrnambool East Primary School Wellbeing team member Jodie Carey said the high rates of family violence were unacceptable.
“We wouldn’t want to lose any of these women and we want to demonstrate that all women are extraordinary in their own way and their own life,” she said. “The goal of the event is to promote positive messages and images of ordinary women to actively ensure that all women are valued and safe from violence in any form.
“We hope to celebrate women who might not necessarily get recognised for the wonderful and profound contributions they make to community, family or an associated business or organisation.”
The goal is to ... ensure that all women are valued and safe from violence in any form
- Organiser Jodie Carey
The nominees are not necessarily women who have been directly affected by domestic violence.
“The aim is not to directly highlight these women but rather highlight that all women could be effected by domestic or family violence and demonstrate the tragic statistics regarding domestic and family violence in Australia.”
Mrs Lenehan described her proudest achievement as becoming a respite foster carer for young children in Warrnambool.
“I love that for a weekend at a time, we can provide a safe space for some of our region’s most vulnerable children,” she said. “We can show them love, have some fun and welcome them as a part of our family.
“I’m proud of the rapport that my husband and I build with these children so quickly and the mark that they leave in our hearts forever.
Mrs Lenehan said she believes being a woman in 2018 should represent certain freedoms.
“It means that we can be what we want to be, wear what we want to wear and say what we want to say, knowing that the world is starting to pay attention,” she said.
“In 2018 women are showing that we are equal, we are worthy and we are great.
“I’m excited to be a woman in 2018, living with the knowledge that the next generation will be raised knowing that they are capable of anything.”