Content warning – suicide. Each year in Australia more than 3,000 people die by suicide, and another 65,000 Australians make a suicide attempt. Researchers estimate that for every person who…
I didn’t get my first period until I was 15 years old. I was the last within my circle of friends, and by then, even my younger sister was a…
Dear Danni, My Mum loves to complain to me (and worse still, to my teens) about how entitled this generation of kids are. How can I convince her she’s wrong;…
Learning to be content in your own company is a vital life skill.Let’s not deprive our kids from the opportunity to develop it.
Worried that your little girl is 10, going on 15? You’re not alone. When I first started working in schools with young women to give them the skills they need…
Mental health issues are taking a terrible toll on our teens. It’s time we also acknowledged the damaging ripple effect may be having on their peers too.
In the age of #MeToo, discussions around sexual harassment are not theoretical for most young women — but are part of their day-to-day experience.
How committed are we really to acknowledge just how complex this issue is, and to implement multifaceted programs to tackle ongoing aggression?
We celebrate various types of courage on our screens, yet in real life we also need to acknowledge that bravery badges can be earned in a myriad of ways.
We seem to suffer from a collective amnesia about what we were like ourselves at this age.
Want to help your children succeed? Then focus on their mistakes. As adults, the single biggest mistake we make is our carefully staged, micromanaged, Instagram-filtered focus on perfection. We’ve created…
Regular readers will know I have spent the past six months as a volunteer Board Director for a new women’s shelter that is opening in Sydney’s northwest, The Sanctuary. Like…
This post was first published by RendezView, 31/1/16 Laptop? Check. Lunch box? Check. Prozac? Check. For more and more young people, the preparation for back to school this year will…
This year is the 70th anniversary of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s annual Book Week, which runs from August 22 – 28. The following post was originally published by…
On Sunday I woke to the news in the Telegraph that teenage girls were “riddled with fear and anxiety” and, overdosing on paracetamol. Was this behaviour really impacting on an…
I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to, and write, some really interesting pieces for various media outlets this week. I want to share the highlights with you here. The always-wise…
When I first co-founded Enlighten Education with my partner Francesca Kaoutal back in 2003, the vision was to create workshops for both girls and boys that would inform, inspire and…
I was thrilled to be asked to contribute to “Destroying The Joint – Why Women Have to Change The World,” an incredible new collection of writing initiated as a response…
1. Fat shaming. I have voiced my concerns over channel 10’s “Biggest Loser” in the Sydney Morning Herald before here: The burden of treating girls’ bodies as the enemy and…
“The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.” Edward Norton This week I want to preempt the release of two extraordinary films with the hope that schools…
Every day at Enlighten, we see the amazing potential that all young people have. So it breaks my heart when I think about the tens of thousands of girls and…
