Hannah Hammoud
Broadmeadows Basketball Association has delivered its gender equality action plan as part of the joint ‘Crash the Boards’ project striving to prevent violence against women through community sport.
The program is part of the State Government’s strategy to prevent family violence by supporting community sport clubs to engage with young people and deliver initiatives to prevent violence against women.
The gender equality action plan for 2023-24 was delivered by former Hume City Broncos player and head coach Katrina Hibbert who is managing the program.
Ms Hibbert said the action plan is aimed at bringing awareness towards the gender drivers that lead towards domestic violence and taking proactive steps to making sporting hubs a safe, inclusive, and welcoming space.
“[For this] pilot program we’re using sport and a community base because we know the importance of sport within the community,” she said.
“… The program is around educating coaches on hacking the four gender drivers that do lead to domestic violence.
“Right now within the program, we are targeting the under 14s, 16s and 18s coaches to help deliver messages around different things, like how one in four women suffer some form of domestic violence before the age of 15.
“It just brings awareness to what’s actually going on, and hopefully that will prove to make some changes down the track as well.”
Broadmeadows Basketball joined seven other associations across Victoria, including Collingwood, Dandenong, Gippsland, Wallan, Southern Peninsula and Bendigo Basketball Associations which together received $160,000 to develop intervention and prevention programs.
Ms Hibbert said that Broadmeadows Basketball Association has led the way with this program and it will be a priority for the association to begin to implement the action plan over the next 12 to 18 months.
“… We are handing over a gender action plan which has been signed off on and approved, to continue to move the club forward in a really positive way,” she said.
