--Debbie Kilroy, founder and head of Sisters Inside, has started a petition on CommunityRun, our new platform where anyone can start their own campaign. Debbie is urgently trying to get the Queensland Government to re-instate funding for Sisters Inside, a group that provides counselling services for imprisoned women.
Imprisoned women are among the most vulnerable women in our society, and have often been the victims of domestic violence and child abuse. They need help to break the cycle, but that life-changing help is about to be taken away. Please sign Debbie's petition: www.communityrun.org/petitions/save-sisters-inside
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It starts with abuse. For most of the women they're the victims of domestic violence. For others the abuse has started much earlier in their lives. Things can then spiral out of control, get worse.
It's this pattern of abuse that has led many women into the prison system.
Debbie knows exactly what it's like and how hard it is to break the cycle because she did just that. And went on to complete studies in social work and later law so she could setup Sisters Inside; a counselling service for imprisoned women in Northern Queensland that helps them recover from years of sexual and physical abuse.
Sisters Inside gives these women the tools they need to turn their lives around, to start afresh with the support they need.
But last week Debbie received some shocking news. The State Government has decided to cut the meagre funding - $120,000 per year - to Sisters Inside as part of wider state budget cuts. The money has already stopped flowing to the program despite the fact they has already helped 188 women this year alone. Debbie is urgently reaching out for your support - please sign her petition to have the funding reinstated to Sisters Inside:
Stand beside Sisters Inside and sign the petition here:
www.communityrun.org/petitions/save-sisters-inside
The Queensland Government isn't expecting a backlash from cutting this program. But what Campbell Newman hasn't factored in is the great hope our movement has in the strength of the human spirit to overcome adversity: and that's what Debbie's program is demonstrating everyday with every life she saves, every family she helps rebuild.
Novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said that the degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Here's what we would see if we walked into the correctional centre at Townsville1:
- 80% of the inmates are of indigenous heritage and the majority of them can't read or write
- At least 85% of women in prison are survivors of sexual abuse
- 98% experienced physical violence as an adult
- 39% have attempted suicide
- 70-90% are addicted to drugs
The women held in these centres show that there aren't just cracks in the system but gaping holes that people fall through again and again. Can you add your name to this petition and tell the Queensland Government that we can't keep setting up these women to fail?
www.communityrun.org/petitions/save-sisters-inside
Debbie's program is about hope, about the ability of people to overcome adversity with a little help.
Yours with hope,
The GetUp Team.
[1] Kilroy, D (2005) ‘The Prison Merry Go Round: No Way Off’, Indigenous Law Bulletin, 2005, Vol.6, Issue 13.
