Project Description
The ‘Whole of community approach to addressing domestic violence’ was a community-led initiative to eliminate gender-based violence through education, intervention, and support. The project adopted a partnership approach between community, local government, and Griffith University’s Disrupting Violence Beacon. The project was piloted in the Division 9 region of the Gold Coast, QLD and aimed to empower community to respond to gender-based violence, creating a unique opportunity to become a leading example of violence prevention at a national level. The project enabled the testing and refinement of a flexible model for community-led primary prevention of domestic and family violence (DFV), delivered through local government jurisdictions.
The project was delivered across four key phases designed to empower community to address DFV, including:
Mapping and measuring community strengths, challenges and attitudes to DFV
Informing and implementing specialised bystander intervention training to key community members
Evaluating the efficacy of the community education and training efforts
Developing community-led initiatives supporting the trained trainer’s efforts to engage the community.
The final output of the project was the development of a scalable model for adaptation and application in communities across Australia.
Project Personnel and Beneficiaries
The project provided direct benefits to the local community and beyond. This was achieved through engagement with the broader community and by bringing together community leaders as drivers of change including from diverse community groups, such as local services and businesses, faith groups, local government, and university representatives to work towards increasing gender equity and taking leadership to address DFV. Project benefits have the potential to extend across communities through equipping individuals with skills and knowledge, fostering collaboration, and building community resilience. The project helped to empower participants to act as catalysts for change, creating ripple effects that enhance local capacities, strengthen community networks, and drive sustainable progress towards gender equality.
Outcomes to Date
The project created important action and advocacy addressing gender-based violence in the community. This was through a range of project activities, including the monthly delivery of community bystander workshops, advocacy and education at community events and with local networks, and co-creating place-based initiatives via co-design activities. This work is ongoing, with predicted positive impact upon gender equity and DFV over the long term which is currently being evaluated for the first year of project delivery. The project led to the creation of a whole of community approach to DFV for adaptation and application in communities, a key knowledge outcome addressing a national gap in community-led frameworks to address gender-based violence, grounded in research.
Project Significance
The project directly contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and SDG Goal 11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. The project worked to increase awareness, educate, and empower local community leaders as skilled DFV bystanders and support them to positively influence others in their community via train-the-trainer and co-design approaches, thereby empowering communities, increasing safety and directly addressing gender inequities. The whole-of-community model created through the delivery of the project also facilitates the translation of this work to other localities in Australia, potentially broadening the impact beyond the pilot project location.