Turn Up Respect - Kayin Ipikazil

[Nooky]

Respect.

Respect for ourselves, for our culture, for each other.

It helps us stand tall and be the warriors we always have been.

Our kids look to us, their mob, mums and dads, aunties, uncles, nans and pops, Elders, mates, to help show them the way.

But these days, there's lots of other voices they're hearing online and on social media.

And they're teaching our kids all kinds of bad, disrespectful stuff about women and girls.

Stuff that can lead to violence.

Violence against women isn't part of our culture.

It never has been.

So we need to drown out the noise from those bad influences and turn up our voices.

Not just online, but everywhere.

Because when we teach our kids respect for themselves, culture, Country and each other, things change, and those disrespectful influencers, they lose.

Because we've turned up respect.

That's how the Kayin Ipikazil program works.

It works with our young women to help them understand what is and isn't okay in relationships. Supporting them in their choices, turning up respect, and helping to break the cycle.

[Kayin Ipikazil]

Being a mother of four girls myself, I wanted to do something different to how I was raised.

Break cycles, provide information, knowledge, you know, education is power and knowledge is power to do things differently.

Kayin Ipikazil is a program that I founded with a friend of mine, a few other women as well and we're talking about the importance of girls having mentors. Having women that they can connect with, look up to and learn from as they navigate through their adolescent years.

I work in the high school and I see the difficulties our young women go through, so to be able to pass on my knowledge and my experience as a Torres Strait Islander woman was something I felt very passionately drawn towards.

Working as a teacher here, you see students come in with a trauma background. They've suffered some kind of trauma in their lives, and that impacts their learning, number one, but it also impacts the choices that they make in their relationships, in friendships or other relationships that they have.

And, so the importance of this program is paramount just because it builds the confidence in them to make decisions about what's okay and what's not okay.

And seeing the young people be able to make those decisions, those positive choices, has just been amazing.

So, Kayin Ipikazil provides a platform where we can share our experiences, not always negative, positive too. But definitely things that we can look back on and see wasn't healthy, wasn't respectful so that our young women are more aware.

And this is experiences I've gone through or experiences I've seen my loved ones go through and how I want to be able to empower them with knowledge.

Trying to help them zone in on, well, who are you? And what's your core value? And what do you want in life? Because you actually have a choice to decide what the outcome of your life is going to be.

The role Kayin Ipikazil plays in preventing family violence is so revolved around respect, self-respect, and when you respect yourself enough to know what you want, you know what to expect in others and what you will allow and what you won't allow.

In the five years that I've been here working with the young people, I've been able to watch some of these young Torres Strait Islander women go through the Kayin Ipikazil program and watch them develop the relationships with some of the mentors that has seen a whole heap of growth in their confidence, in their resilience and in their respect for themselves really, and the respect that they have built with the mentors as well.

So all of that growth is going to help them as they grow into young adult.

Before the Kayin Ipikazil, I felt like there was like nowhere to just go and vent.

Like, I didn't have that support.

I didn't have the confidence to just go and sit down and talk about how I felt.

I guess just not using my words and just keeping everything inside.

Now I feel like I can go and sit down with my mentors or my family member and tell them how I feel, like I don't keep it inside anymore, and it makes me feel happy, like I don't have to carry that weight all the time.

The impact of the Kayin Ipikazil program has been very humbling.

I don't think I realise how much of an impact we have until you reflect back or you just see what some young women are doing and I don't think it's directly because of Kayin Ipikazil, there's other factors as well, but I like to feel like we have a part, we've played a part in someone's life and it's always about planting that seed.

There's no shame in having support and help in things that you don't know how to do.

Because how else are you gonna learn?

Like, you need the help and support.

And if it's there, take it.

Because you will succeed in things that you don't know you will succeed in.

And it's a very good outcome when you do.

It's a really good one.

The support helped me graduate.

The support helped me in a lot of things actually,

communicating, listening to others and not just lashing out.

Becoming a different person of myself than I was before. And I can see it now.

[Nooky]

I want to make this place better for my kids.

I want to leave something behind for them.

So let's be loud and proud.

Let's raise our voices and teach our kids about respect every day in our communities, because respect for ourselves, our culture, our Country, and each other can drown out the voices of disrespect. Anywhere.

It's time to pump up the volume.

Let's Turn Up Respect.