S2 Ep1: It's Time to Get Talking
SHOW NOTES
Welcome to the first episode of the Run Against Violence for 2022!
In this episode, you’ll hear from Run Against Violence co-founders Kirrily Dear and Brad Smithers. In 2014, Kirrily set out to run 860km over 12 days through regional New South Wales. Kirrily and Brad share how that run changed the course of their lives and how the Run Against Violence has grown over the last 6 years.
Also in this episode:
Kirrily and Brad share what’s new for the RAV Virtual Challenge in 2022,
the plans for season 2 of the podcast in 2022,
meet Jo from Real Girls Sweat in our Team Spotlight
hear a special message for you from Trista from the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse (NAPCAN).
If you or someone close to you is experiencing family violence, please talk to someone. You can call 1800 RESPECT (Australia only) if you would like to talk to a professional service or if there is an immediate threat to safety call the police on Triple Zero (000) (Australia only).
THE RAV PODCAST IS ALSO AVAILABLE AT
TRANSCRIPT
Jen: Welcome to the Run Against Violence Podcast for 2022 where together we'll listen, learn and talk about how we can all take steps to create respectful relationships in order to prevent family violence in our communities.
Hello, I'm Jen Brown and I'm so honoured to be the host of the Run Against Violence Podcast for 2022. So this podcast covers the Run Against Violence, or as we affectionately love to call it RAV Virtual Team Challenge as teams of walkers and runners virtually chase each other from Broken Hill to Sydney, covering a distance of 1,300 kilometres - that's 32 marathons over 19 days.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live our route from Broken Hill to Sydney crosses from the lands of the Wiradjuri nation in the west of New South Wales to the Eora nation in the east. I am recording this podcast on Dharug Country. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and I extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are listening today.
As I said, I am very honoured to be hosting the podcast this year. We have 15 fantastic episodes planned for you between now and the end of the challenge in September. We are gonna cover everything related to the Virtual Challenge, from how to rally the troops, organize your teams, how to train for it and how to accomplish your goals no matter what they are during the challenge.
And in each episode, we're also going to highlight one of the amazing teams who are participating this year. Plus, we are gonna talk about why we are ultimately here, family and domestic violence. So we're going to talk about, we're gonna dive into some topics that are being discussed in the media a lot at the moment, like coercive control. And we're going to hear from victims and survivors. There will be some very difficult conversations. But there'll be some laughter too.
And on that note, I think there is only one place that we can kick off the 2022 season of the podcast. And that is with the incredible co-founders of RAV Kirrily Dear and Brad Smithers.
It's actually quite weird to be inviting you onto what is essentially your own podcast, but that's where we're at right now. Um, so I wanna thank you both for, uh, trusting me with this project, because this is really important to me. And like me, there will be people new to the virtual challenge. Um, so let's start at the beginning.
There’ll be a lot of people listening who aren't familiar with the Run Against Violence or the challenge. So Kirrily, could you take us back to the start, back to 2014 and tell us how it all started?
Kirrily: Gosh, uh, so back in 2013, I'm going to guess, Brad. I guess a few things came together.
I had been doing ultra running for a couple of years and I had kind of woken up one morning and had the ambition to want to run 500 miles. And yes, the reason is as trivial as you think because that song had stuck in my head as a young person but at the same time, we had a series of women killed in Sydney. Three women were killed in fairly quick succession by current or former intimate partner. And that was the time that I first heard the statistic of one woman a week being killed in Australia by a current or former intimate partner. And I'd never heard of the issue before. I didn't realise we had an issue with domestic and family violence in Australia. I knew it existed. I didn't realize the scale that it existed on. To cut long story short, through some different conversations I ended up in an office of one of my clients at the time who was a White Ribbon Ambassador. And I talked about with him about the work that White Ribbon were doing at that stage. I ended up donating that 500 miles of running to White Ribbon. So in 2014 in November, I ended up doing 860 kilometres through Western New South Wales, uh, to engage communities in conversations at that stage specifically about violence against women. When I came up with that idea, I had no idea how I was gonna make it happen. I created a Facebook group and put a post up saying anyone wanna help or come along. And this guy called Brad Smithers, put his hand up. And the rest is history. And here we are. That was 2013. So nine years later. Mm, wow.
Jen: What do you think it was? I don't wanna put words in your mouth Kirrily, but we've known each other for several many years now. And as I understand it, this wasn't a personal topic for you. Like you had no past experience, no past exposure to family violence yourself. So what, why do you think it was those stories at that time that that was such a trigger or such a switch for you?
Kirrily: For me personally, I think Brad, um, has a really different perspective on this too. I guess we both arrived at a level of commitment at different times, but that kind of came together at the end of that 2014. But for me, it was really looking at the face of one of those women that had been killed. And at the time the media were really focusing on her story. And it was the first time I slowed down enough, I think to actually noticed that, you know, when I looked at her, I sort of started to realise that she was actually a woman that was just like me. Sort of my age, similar background. And just that look in her eye, the photos, I thought, God, if we'd known each other in real life, we would've been best friend. We would've been the best of mates. She looked like a hoot. She looks like the sort of woman that just wants to get out there and have fun and live life.
And it sent me on a, I guess, a whole wave of thought line of thought around, well, how does it happen? You know, at that stage, I thought it was always something that happened to other people. If I even figured that it existed to now to realize that it happened to women just like me and her face kept coming up in my memory. And in my mind, every time I was out running and it'd bring me to tears and I just knew that…. My intuition telling me it's time to go do something and not to walk away from it. And from there, it was just the stories, the stories, the people that came up and just shared. What they'd lived through. You don't get to walk away from it once, you know, it's there.
Jen: So, Brad, obviously you responded to that post in the Facebook group that day, when Kirrily said, uh, I'm gonna run 500 miles across the state, anyone wanna help me out? Could you ever possibly have imagined that we would still be having this conversation today?
Brad: No Jen. It was the furthest thought from my head at that point in time, I was just concerned with logistics of organizing a run. I like that mental challenge, just trying to think of all the things which you have to do and how to, how to schedule them and how to work them and everything like that.
So before the run, that was my only real involvement. If that made sense, you know, it wasn't a cause, it wasn’t anything that I was involved in at that point in time. I just liked the idea of 11 days, oh 12 days, 860 kilometres. The first day, you know, 95 kilometres. Didn't quite understand the distances or some of the things that we had to do until we were actually out on the trail, but there was a whole heap of things we had to organize beforehand. And that just consumed my time until we were actually out there at Walgett on the starting line.
Jen: Kirrily, you talked about, you mentioned that once you know the problem, once you understand the problem, you hear the stories, you can't walk away from it. Brad, I'm curious, was there a experience, a moment, a conversation or something in that first run in 2014 that, um, really was so profound that it got under your skin and you knew you couldn't walk away from it afterwards?
Brad: There was Jen. We ran into Tamworth, I think on day four. Day four or five. I can't remember. There was a high school match on the White Ribbon Cup was being played that day. So it was a hot November day and they had postponed this match from normal wintertime to summertime. And in the lead up to the match, I met a boy who was struggling to do up his shoelaces. We had shoelaces, we were giving out shoelaces and he was having trouble just dying them. And I just said, can I help you? And we got talking and he'd been, he was a survivor of domestic violence. He was in his early teens. And he'd been bashed by his mum as a kid. And it sort of impacted him in, in a few ways I won't go into, but yeah, him, him just talking about his story to me just touched a nerve. And I think, well, I feel that when you see people, they don't become numbers anymore. You know, one in three women, you know, suffer at the hands of an intimate partner, but you don't see, you know, it's just a number which we throw out there. They talk about numbers all the time. But as soon as you see some, you put a, a face to that person, to that number it becomes real. And that happened again and again and again on the run. Kirrily remember the grandmother we met at that pub that night and her daughter had been bashed within an inch of her life by her partner and just her explaining the circumstances and the story around it was just, it, it tears at the heart. But then thinking about some of the positive things, which we saw on the way, which also had a profound impact on me. When we were in Parkes, the school children in Parkes had done a…it was our first exposure at Love Bites, didn't realize that back then. But the kids in Parkes had put all these posters around the park and there was some survivors talking there about their experiences. But to see the school children being involved from the other side was to me, was a positive. And we didn't realize at the time the effect of that, and Kirrily ended her run in Forbes on White Ribbon Day and welcomed by the school, into Forbes. So, you know, you had both extremes, but both had a, a large impact on me.
Jen: What about you, Kirrily? I imagine at the start of that run, you would been a slightly stressed out ultra runner. But was there a particular experience or encounter that really shifted things for you or really shifted your perspective?
Kirrily: During that run. I, I think I was more teary and stressed out at the beginning of that run. It was like, it was already 36 degrees at 4.30 in the morning and all this sort of carry on. It was ridiculous. So I had a good cry on Brad's shoulder.
I think as Brad said, once we got through that first day, I think, um, not so much that we were invincible, but we sort of thought we can get through anything cause it was ridiculous. I think it's the culmination. There's definitely some powerful stories came through. And in the documentary, I talk about one particular lady who messaged me at 4:30 AM on the same day that Brad's talking about when we ran into Tamworth and she was laying in her hospital bed, watching the run and following it online. And her ambition was to be able to, um, she, she knew she'd never be able to run it, but perhaps do a long walk to raise awareness around domestic violence, because her she'd tried to leave her partner and he'd broken her back in the process the Christmas previous, and she was in hospital because the nerves weren’t healing correctly in her back and had to have constant surgery and, and all sorts of things. There was those stories. The children, any time a child comes up to you and shares the stories that Brad's talking about. You once you've looked them in the eye, you don't get to walk away. I've had kids come up to me at the high schools and things like that.
And there's one particular face person that keeps coming back to me. He came up and thanked me for doing what we were doing. And because he, he said, I didn't realise that people cared about kids like me. Yeah, we were both balling our eyes out at that moment. It's the moments talking to the social workers, talking to the police, talking to the incredible people at places like the Salvation Army that do all the work that are out there at the coal face, supporting people.
It all just added up so much over time, I think. And a lot of stories; there's one particular woman. I remember speaking to in Parkes. We just shared stories, the power of stories, isn't it, it transforms numbers and statistics into people. It’s the conversation, isn't it? It's having those chats, having those moments and slowing down enough to genuinely talk to each other about something that's incredibly uncomfortable.
Brad: Mm. So true. And Jen, I think the other thing which I feel is very humbled when someone shares a story with you. It's hard to express, but it's just beautiful. It's, it's very, very humbling to hear some of the stories and and feel that they're comfortable enough to share a story with you.
Jen: Yeah, that's so true. So true. So you mentioned the second run. So that was the first one was 2014. The second one was in 2017 and just a little longer understatement, Kirrily. How did that one come about? Both the route you took and the distance
Kirrily: Well, I think for the two and a half years, or two years, I was going never again, never again, never again. And then the troublesome second album appeared. Well, I guess the question that came to my mind too was really wanting to do it again.
Jen: was it wanting to do another run again or was it that you'd had such a profound, life changing experience the first time around, particularly with the people and the stories and the cause that you wanted to do something again?
Kirrily: I think, um, for me personally, it was lots of layers to it. But I think I really wanted something that was for Run Against Violence. So after I did that first run for White Ribbon, Brad and I decided we wanted to do more and continue. As I have often said, we reached the finish line, but we knew our work wasn't over.
So we created Run Against Violence. After speaking to a lot of different people, from social workers, policing, to know what did they need. And they were talking about needing the broader community involved because whenever they tried to educate people, it was always either people connected to the cause or one degree of separation.
They'd either been affected by domestic and family violence or the police, you know, agencies and things like that. So we're never gonna solve the problem unless the broader community brings the willpower into the mix to be able to say, yes, we're gonna change the way we talk.
So that's why we created Run Against Violence. Cause we saw running as a fantastic way of engaging the broader community. And I guess in the back of my mind at that stage was we need something that was ours. And I had wanted to include Broken Hill in that first run because Broken Hill again is a remote community has really, um, I guess some really challenging statistics around family violence within their community.
But at the time, in 2014, 2015, they were also winning a lot of awards for leadership in addressing that problem. So to me, it really stood out as a fantastic place for us to visit, but that first run when I was trying to map it out there were way, way too many scary kilometres involved. So I guess fast forward a few years. My brain, you know, we'd achieved 860km. My brain was around how to run the stuff. And we wanted to create a run that had the cross section of all communities. So we wanted to really demonstrate that family violence doesn't exist in any particular community culture, et cetera, alone. We wanted to show it touches every part of Australia. So going from Broken Hill, all the way through New South Wales and then touching the water next to the Sydney Opera House in the leafy suburbs of eastern Sydney, you've moved through all the incredible mixing pot of cultures that is Western Sydney.
So that was one of the reasons that we chose that particular route. It turned out to be about 1300 kilometres. Um, and I was also doing research at that stage, you know, just getting my head around all the statistics and information again, and looking at what had changed, say from 2014 to 2017, and we had seen some significant shifts around the subject, but I was reading a report from the Human Rights Commissioner in Australia that was talking about family violence statistics. And one of the statistics in there was that 1.7 million Australians experienced physical abuse before their 15th birthday, 1.7 million Australians. I thought that's an interesting number.
Hey Brad, how many steps is it from Broken Hill to Sydney? Okay, if it's roughly 70 centimeters per step, or something's the average step length or whatever, and it was just over 1.7 million. As soon as I saw that number, I think it was it's a go. Well, that was my perspective.
Brad will have another perspective. What was your perspective?
Brad: no, so I thought it was great to go and do another run. I mean, as Kirrily said, she had her brain around the kilometres and so that wasn't an issue. I, I love the idea of her going across the State to me because it encompasses so many communities along the way. And I'm just happy to do another run just to get the band back together.
Jen: So it was longer, but what was harder about it or different for you?
Brad: I'm interested to hear Kirrily’s thoughts on this as well, but the first one we're more concerned about getting the kms done every day. The second run, we took time out to smell the roses and to look at the beautiful view, or to look at the vista or to share a sunset or to share something with, with people, you know, to speak to the farmer or to speak to his family or to do those things along the way. Which, I mean the first time we still did, but not to the same extent. And I think the second time we spent more time doing those things. I still remember the conversations with farmers and then inviting us for lunch and doing this and doing that. And, you know, we had lady who followed us for a little while. We met her out on the road. She owned a property out at Ivanhoe. Huge amount of acres. I forget how many acres she owned, but you know, half the land between I think, Ivanhoe and Lake Menindee. And she came, she was coming to a gymkhana or something like that.
And she worked out where we were on the trail and came and said ‘g’day’ to us again. We met her a couple of times, so it was just probably the moments where… I think the second time the people were more special as well. But the moments we took time out for the moments as well.
Kirrily: Brad's exactly right. I think we had a much clearer purpose as to why we were out there. Yeah. And we're out there to start conversations. So any opportunity to do that, we took the time to do it. In the first run, I don't wanna just say just another charity run, but it was, it was like that for us in the beginning.
Uh, we've gotta get kms done. You just run, you raise money. All good. Where in the second run, it was about conversation and community engagement. We understood that much better. So not only are we doing all these logistics of running and keeping, you know, everyone alive, not just me. Well then also doing events along the way. We had 9 events at night or school events and having lunch at the little Milthrope Public School and all that sort of thing. It was, um, yeah, the logistics around that, but we built time in to do that. Um, but perhaps that Milthorpe example's a great one, cause that day we were walking way into the ‘am’. I think I ended up getting about three hours or four hours break before I had to go and do the next day. So that was a classic situation where we could have said, no, we're not going to go there because we haven't got time. I wasn't moving well, all that sort of stuff. But we said, no, we're out here for this. If kilometres don't happen, that's not a problem. We have to have the conversations. So there was a different priority.
Jen: So that was 2017 and it was also the year of the first virtual challenge. Wasn't it? So how and when did that idea come about?
Kirrily: Um, it came about 3:00 AM. uh, I think it was maybe six or eight weeks beforehand. It wasn't that long beforehand. Was it? It wasn't that Brad. I had been, well, I guess we'd all been thinking about how do we do the community engagement piece? Yeah. How do we get more people involved in the run. Virtual challenges now are a dime, a dozen they're everywhere, but they weren't very common back then. And I'd kind of heard of the concept and I think, but I'd never done one. And that's why I think it was sort of bouncing around a bit, my unconscious mind, and 3:00am the epiphany happened. What's still a virtual challenge! Uh, great but what's that? Thank you brain, but what the heck is that? um, and so research a lot of phone calls, lot of posts asking does anyone know how to do this?
Um, run down under, uh, Travis Allen, there was incredible. Put his hand up and said, said, yep, I'll help. Did a whole hip of programming and for us, uh, to make that possible. And so however many weeks later, when I towed the start line at Broken Hill, there were over 2000 people joined me online in groups of 10. We only allowed people to have teams of up to 10 in the first one. We learnt and extended the teams for 2019. But, um, yeah, that's, that's how it all came about.
Jen: Wow. Essentially, what do you see as the goal or the purpose of it? How do you think having a virtual challenge actually contributes to our end goal of ending family violence in our community?
Kirrily: Look, it actually came as a surprise to us again for us when we first thought about doing the virtual challenge. It was, um, it just, so people had something to follow and, and be a bit involved with it. And we thought, well, that's good. It'll raise some awareness if they're involved with the event in that way. But what we found happened was just incredible, was somewhere around about, I don’t know day 10.
So it was a reasonable way into it. There'd been this incredible community spring up amongst these, the camaraderie between the 2000 people was phenomenal online. Cause the first few days we didn't see it because we were out in the middle of, what's the polite word in the middle of absolutely nowhere? Where there wasn't a lot of internet and so as in it was a surprise when came online and I was just ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. My phone was just going off with all these incredible messages, but it created this really wonderful environment and somewhere around about day 10, people started sharing their stories. People who had survived family violence and said, well, you know, they'd just say, well this is what I live with when I was a kid, or this is the relationship I left 20 years ago, or, and quite often for them, it was the first time they had shared that story.
So we'd actually created this microcosm of culture where people felt safe talking about something as an incredibly taboo subject. And then we've noticed the difference that made to the people who shared the story. So they, when I spoke to them afterwards, they say, God, I'm so liberating. I feel lighter. I feel like I have a fresh start for having spoken about it.
Then we also noticed that the people who are perhaps like me had never been really exposed to domestic and family violence before they made the connection that I had made. And so they then started to say, okay, what can I do? What am I gonna do in my community to help these conversations?
And we also all started to learn, well what does this look like? What do we have to do? So conversation, simple conversations. I call them micro conversations. They don't have to be little chats here and there started to change the culture really quickly. So I'm a great believer that we actually know how to end or prevent family violence.
We know what respectful relationships and good communication looks like. What we don't have in our community is the willpower, the commitment of the entire community to say, this is how we're all going to behave. This is how we're all going to interact with each other. Part of that is that we're all going to learn about it.
And conversation brings that about. Conversation helps us learn. Conversation helps us engage and truly understand each. So it seems so simple. Do you know what I mean? We’ve had to process this over the, the last few years, over the last five years, six years. How can it be so simple as a conversation, but conversation is incredibly powerful and that's how we end up bringing an end, preventing family violence in our communities. We talk about it.
Jen: It is, it's actually mind blowing to think the solution is that simple, not easy, but simple. Mm. Um, and we all just have to be willing to get uncomfortable and have, and listen to, and be part of what are at times exceptionally uncomfortable and difficult conversations.
Jen: So this is the sixth year of virtual challenge, Brad, for those who have done it in the past, what's new, what's different?
Kirrily: Five years, we’ve been going for six. It's been six years since we've only done five editions. Ah, sorry. And yes, there is a story behind that. We do it just to confuse people.
Jen: Well, it worked them. It worked clearly. This is the fifth edition of the virtual challenge. Brad, what is new? What is different this year? What will our past participants see and experience?
Brad: Well, hopefully a bit of experience with platforms because we have consolidated onto one platform now. We've got rid of four platforms and we're using one platform now to do everything. So our Race Roster is is the new partner which we have and on their platform, you can register, you can set your team up, measures the team kilometres, it measures your kilometres and you can fundraise off that page as well. Kirrily and I are on a steep learning curve. but it's our first year. So maybe not won't everything might work first time as we want it. But, um, we'll definitely, we definitely, it's a big improvement on where we've been in the past and that's not our previous platform served the purpose, but now we have one and where we'd like to be going forward.
Jen: And so if there's someone listening to this who is new to the virtual challenge like yours, truly, or they wanna be involved, but they don't have a team, how can they get involved? I
Brad: I'll take the second question. First. We have three ‘find me a team’ teams. So when you, when you go onto the registration page, we list the team names. So you can join that team and we'll allocate you to a team. There's always teams looking for team members and already on Facebook. I've got a couple of team captains saying we're looking for some team members. So I just reach out to the team captain, and say, how many people did you like? And, and then allocate those people to the team. So we can find you a team.
Jen: Oh, that's brilliant. That is brilliant. And, uh, it's interesting watching, um, the challenge too. I love the different experiences people have Kirrily, like there are teams who will go hard and try and get it done in the first sub 20 hours or something incredible, through to those other teams, which will be like me, and I'm just putting it out there right now. We will do it at our own pace in our own way. I was gonna say, as long as we want, we'll take 19 days to get it done. Do you enjoy watching that dynamic to unfold Kirrily?
Kirrily: Yes. Yeah, it it's interesting on because it starts on the 30th of August every year. So sometimes 30th of August is a Saturday. It could be a Tuesday. So when it starts on the weekends, that's when you see the, the new time records, I think because everyone's got the time off work, they plan it and they smash it out. Not everyone has a luxury of being able to take a day off work, I guess, to, to make that happen, but we'll see the distance, uh, the distances are hard fought for. I don't wanna let any cats out of the bag, but I have already been contacted by people saying ‘So this distance record of 5,000 whatever kilometres’? So what happens is teams get together? They do their 1300km to Sydney, then they run back to Broken Hill. Then they run to Sydney. Then they run back to Broken Hill in the 19 days. So that's all the ultra running crowd get a little bit competitive about that. So that's always interesting to see, um, what people are going to get up to. I think the bit I love the most is when people blow their own minds and they go, oh gosh, no, I dunno how we're going to do this. And you know, I only wanna do, if I can do 10 kilometres or, you know, that'll be great or whatever it might be.
And then they end up doing 30 kilometres or they end up doing 80 kilometres or whatever it is. But that thing when people post it up and they've blown their own minds of what they can possibly achieve, that's always very cool. I love that. And I love watching the teams come together. So the ones that finish quickly, they always come back to encourage the others as well.
So, yeah, I think that's really beautiful and I get all these messages and Brad probably gets them to, can I donate my kilometres to such and such team and to help them out everything else. So that's amazing. It's really lovely. There’s always the people there that want to be a little bit competitive and that's fine. You know, people that are really committed to their ultra running or whatever it might be. But the vast majority of people are there for the joy of it and for the cause and enjoying each other and participating and being part of something that's very, very, very special. The best 19 days of the year by a long shot.
Jen: That's a big marketing call from a marketing expert.
Kirrily: So don't ask me, get the, get the reviews and the validation from our followings. 1-800-AMAZING event though.
Jen: I am sure I'm gonna hear those stories being in this seat hosting this podcast this year. Teams people have been bombarding my inbox, trying to join the podcast to get their team featured in the Team Spotlights. People are very proud of their team and want everyone to know how good they are. It's awesome. So speaking of, of the podcast Kirrily, you can answer this one. This is season two of the podcast. So what can our listeners expect from this season?
Kirrily: Well, we've got this incredible host called Jen Brown who has known me since I did my very first 50-kilometer run. Jen was there to witness it.
Jen: I was your crew. I was your Brad.
Kirrily: Yes. Yes, you were my Brad. You're my very first Brad. Freshly retired lawyer who started a podcast called Sparta Chicks Radio and who then also interviewed me leading into 2014 and 2017. So you've been there for the whole RAV journey, which is incredible, but what are we going to cover?
The theme for this year is ‘today's conversations are tomorrow's way of life’. So we're focusing on the theme of the fact that what we talk about today, and we've seen this over the last six years, five additions, of the virtual challenge is the profound impact of conversation. And if we choose to have these conversations, then we're going to define the community that we live in years to come and the community our kids get to grow up in. So that's the overall theme. We're revisiting some of the people that have been here since the get go and what they've seen from the different aspects of, or their viewpoint. We’re again getting to meet some of the team captains. We've got some experts coming. We've got some interesting investigative reporting being done by Jen Brown.
Jen: 60 Minutes will be calling me any minute.
Kirrily: Some groundbreaking investigative reporting. So we got enormous feedback about the podcast last year, which again was one of those 3:00am ideas, 10 days I think it was before we started. And the guys from the Aussie Runner podcast did an incredible job of bringing that together for us. So we're coming back, a bit more planful, this year to bring episodes from now through to the end of the challenge.
Jen: Mm. I love listening to the episodes from last year. Like they was such a beautiful insight into both the challenge and the reason that we're all here. Yeah, I'm really excited and really honoured to be having some of those conversations this year, too. So thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. I shall let you go and get back to your, uh, admin, what registration's opened two days ago?
Brad: Yes, certainly did. 491 registrations before this meeting?
Kirrily: Let's see, we've gotta be getting very close to magic. 500.
Jen: That was 491 an hour ago. So refresh, refresh,
Kirrily: 501! We’ve hit 501. How good's that? Oh, that's perfect timing. I was looking at the heat map. So we've got this heat map that every time someone registers a little dot appears on it and we've gone global, we've got all the states of Australia. We've got New Zealand, we've got the USA, we've got the UK, we've got Germany.
Jen: Oh, that's fantastic. Wow. How. That is so cool. That is so cool. Well there'll be more numbers before bedtime because team Sparta Chicks has to get their butt into gear. So I'm gonna go and do that now. Thank you so much for both of you for being here and for sharing your journey.
Kirrily: Thank you, Jen.
Brad: Thanks Jim.
Jen: How good are those two? Um, that was a really fun conversation for me. And you will hear from them again soon in a couple of week’s time. Now, as I promised at the start in each episode, we're gonna highlight and hear from one of the amazing teams who are participating in the challenge this year. And first up, we have Jo Parker from Real Girls Sweat who are based in Albury Wodonga in northern Victoria. Welcome Jo!
Jo: Hi, I'm Jo Parker. And I'm the team captain for Real Girls Sweat. I first started created a team back in 2017 after hearing Kirrily talk on Jen's Sparta Chick Podcast way back when and as soon as I, you know, when I listened to that podcast, I thought, you know, what a fantastic initiative, and a great way to help promote Kirrily’s cause. And so we've had a team every year since. I'm located in northeast Victoria, or Albury Wodonga. The first year we entered, um, the challenge it was when you could only have teams of 10. And I actually entered in two teams of 10.
At that point, I have to say, Kirrily if you listen to this, I am really pleased we now have teams of 20 because the teams of 10, uh, were rather challenging given that the majority of my girls…we have a combination of runners and walkers in our team. and when it was a team of 10, trying to get seven kilometres a day for the 19 days was a lot harder ask than it first seemed and it was challenging keeping everybody on track and making sure we were sort of hitting vague milestones every few days, to make sure we weren't falling too far behind. But the girls on the team were quite committed. So as soon as we knew where we were up to, if we knew we were falling behind, there'd be other girls on the team that would pick up a few extra kilometres to, to make sure we got to the challenge or met the challenge in the end.
Uh, the teams of 20 make that much easier. So we have girls who will do a couple kilometres, a kilometre or so a day, others will do larger distances and they'll run or walk it. We spread the load and it's quite a great, a good way. I find it's the timing of it is really good as well as coming out of winter, and it gets my girls, it gives them a good reason to get up and move more. So it's, I guess it's a not catch 22. It's a, it's a win-win really. So it's promoting a great cause. Getting that awareness out there, starting the conversations and also getting them moving again after winter.
Now that we've been doing this since 2017, most of the clients, or most of the girls in the team know what to expect. And there's a little bit of friendly rivalry and challenge within our group. And I love seeing where our team is tracking within the greater map. We used to follow the teams in the maps to see how we're doing.
So I look, I think it's a fantastic initiative. Our group is all women and I think women getting together to support other women or families impacted or dealing with domestic violence, I think is that something we can all get behind and really make sure we have start those conversations.
Jen: Thanks, Jo. So if you wanna join the RAV challenge, don't forget that registrations are now open and they will be up until the second week of the challenge. But. I'm pretty sure you don't wanna wait that long. So make sure you register your team now and organize a few friends to join you. And if you don't have a team and wanna be involved, don't let that stop you.
As Brad said, you can register on the website and the amazing RAV team will find you a team. Now there is one more person, I wanna introduce you today. And her name is Trista. Trista works for an incredible organization called NAPCAN, which is the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Now RAV has joined forces with NAPCAN to ensure that every teenager in Australia has the opportunity to learn about what healthy relationships look like via its extraordinary program called Love Bites. And by being a participant in the virtual challenge and raising funds, you are helping to support the work of NAPCAN and to roll out this incredible program throughout the country. So Trista has a very special message for you.
Trista: Hello and welcome everybody. My name's Trista I'm from NAPCAN, which is the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. And I'd like to welcome you all to this podcast. I'm just a little bit excited. It is my first podcast. I'm speaking about something that I'm incredibly passionate about and we are just so pleased at NAPCAN that we are having this amazing partnership with RAV and the excitement of the virtual challenge, which is coming up.
So before I start going on a little bit more about Love Bites and what that looks like, and I'm thanking all of you for coming along. I'd like to introduce myself, as I said, my name's Trista. I have worked for NAPCAN for the last 10 years. I say this all the time that. It's gone by in a heartbeat. And I truly believe it's because I'm as passionate about the work that we do now is what I was when I started 10 years ago.
It is all about prevention. Like many of my colleagues, we come from backgrounds in child protection and all share similar experiences of why are we still living in communities where things like violence is prevalent, where there is relationship breakdowns. And as a consequence, it's our children and young people and essentially whole communities which are hurt and harmed where we can preventing it in the first place.
So that's what, we're all. I am really fortunate in the work that I do that whilst I'm based in my hometown of Tassie and the key manager down there, I also deliver a lot of our training programs, including the Love Bites training. This allows me the opportunity to be invited into communities right across this beautiful country, um, that we're located on.
And for that I'm really grateful because there, I can meet people in the community, the children, and the young people and get to learn from them and whether that's really urban centres or whether that's incredibly rural and remote centres. Um, it varies, it varies whether it's face to face contact or after COVID and still ongoing, or because of COVID whatever way you wanna look at it, being invited in, um, via the internet or on zoom meetings as well.
So that's me in terms of my work, why I love it so much, but let me talk a little bit more about Love Bites, which as I mentioned, we are really honoured to have RAV on board with supporting the program. Um, this is all such a great cause and again, thanking your commitment and your time to being a part of it.
And I think we should be excited because we are in a space where change is possible and where we are seeing change. And most importantly, where children and young people are actually being the advocates for this change. I believe the Love Bites program as a respectful relationship education program is quite unique in that it is about allowing conversations around what does a healthy relationship look like. What does an unhealthy or at a violent relationship look like? What are some of the red flags or the triggers? What does consent look like? Many, many elements around relationships in general, but the unique thing about the Love Bites respectful relationship education program that NAPCAN has developed is that it's very much about their conversations.
It's very much about allowing them to have the space where as adults, we can be there to help guide them and support them. But we actually have to really sit back and empower them to manage those conversations and essentially work out where they wanna be, what their line is, what it actually looks like for them.
And I say to the facilitators, when I train them, I say, you know, this isn't about you teaching too. In fact, what you'll get out of this, if you do it, the way that it should be done is actually an opportunity to really learn from our young people. And we do believe that the Love Bites program gives that opportunity for that empowerment for our young people to manage up as well.
So essentially it started, and I should sort of say side note the program. Yes, it's called Love Bites. And it was named by young people. Hence why it has that name. And it started way back in 2004. So predominantly, it was the school health nurses in New South Wales who approached NAPCAN way back then and said that they were going to work in schools, you know, often delivering programs around things like sexual health and contraception, et cetera.
Yeah, there was nothing that really talked about relationships and their concerns were in the space of young people were engaging in those relationships with nothing to help them navigate through, or really give them the language around it. So in partnership with New South Wales Government, Love Bites was actually born and it continues to grow.
We have just done some new streamlines for the program. Um, and I know all of us, you know, when we're trained in this space, we go, oh, Do I have to get trained again, it's very much about adapting the program. So it remains relevant. It is, as I said, you know, as a consequence of the young people telling us what they need to know, what's important for them that we do these updates and streamline it to make it easier for the facilitators as well.
The other thing about Love Bites which actually makes it unique as well, is that whole concept of empowering the young people. It is about providing them an opportunity to not just hear the information, to have those conversations, but then take that on board and put back to the community. The conversations that they think are important that they believe the community need to know by ways of community education campaigns.
I would like to really thank you. And for anyone who is interested in finding more about nap can and the love bites program, please feel free to jump on our website. There's heaps of information there. Um, alternatively, contact us directly. I also wanna go back to thank each of you for your participation in the virtual challenge. And it's like the Love Bites program. It can be hard, but it's a lot of fun. We're really looking forward to it at NAPCAN. We've got our NAPletes engaged again. We're all busily training aren't we in NAPletes?. I can hear you all out there getting ready to take it on board.
We did it last year. Last year was our first year. So we think we've got a bit of a game plan this year. Maybe we don't leave all of the running to the last 24 hours, um, or I'm giving out secrets here, but that's probably quite obvious for most of you as well. Um, Let's have fun. I'd love to hear the rest of the podcast as we go back.
And I know that we've got a really lovely community going on, so I really encourage you all to go out there, get it out into the community, as I'm sure that you do continue to get that support. We'll see you on the flip side by everyone.
Jen: So that's it for this week's episode of the Run Against Podcast. The first episode for 2022. Thanks for being here. Don't forget to go and register your team and then we would love it. If you would share this podcast with one friend or with your entire team, and I will chat to you next week. Bye.