In 2019 Women’s Community Shelters launched their Walk the Talk education initiative in fifteen Sydney schools, with 2,300 participating high school students.  

A pioneering program building awareness of domestic violence and women’s homelessness, Walk the Talk empowered these young people to support local women and children in need by ‘adopting’ their local shelter.

Phase one of the program is a half-day in school workshop delivered by Enlighten Education and the Goodfellas team.
Phase two is a community-based service learning opportunity; teens get to support the work of their local women’s refuge.

The 2019 participating students raised money through numerous fundraising activities, created welcome packs, handmade wooden toys for the shelters, grew vegetables, volunteered including landscaping the gardens and renovated a study space in one of the shelters, assisted at gala fundraisers and helped raise awareness in their local communities. 

You may read the winner of the inaugural Walk The Talk awards, Arianna Levy’s , account of what the program taught her here in a profile published by Stellar Magazine.

Click on the video to hear more student voices describe their year of walking the talk.