South Coast Police District, Group 7 Rugby League and the NRL get ready to host more than 200 students for the 2025 Domestic Violence Awareness Cup.
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00:00We've got six schools that are engaged in the program this year, which is really great.
00:04We've had our police from the Crime Prevention Unit working on this for a number of years now, as you've indicated.
00:10Five schools last year, six this year.
00:13They're really excited to see the program building up.
00:16The schools are engaged in designing their own jerseys and playing with those.
00:20And then we align the day with a number of support networks and organisations that come there to the ground
00:27and just highlight the prevalence of domestic violence and how we can provide support to the younger generation
00:34to try and curb what's going on in currently domestic violence around our cities.
00:39It's also to provide some advice around what healthy relationships look like
00:43and if, in fact, they do need some assistance, where to go to to get that assistance.
00:47You know, a lot of people on the South Coast, especially in the Shellhaven, play rugby league.
00:51And rugby league's more than just a sport.
00:53Trust me, I can talk from the bottom of my heart saying that because at the end of the day,
00:56it's not just about winning and losing.
00:58It's about that community connection.
01:00It's about finding people within your community who are role models, who are trusted adults,
01:05who are people that you can talk to if you or someone you may not be going through domestic violence.
01:09But not only that, as actually mentors in our community, you can find that in the sporting space.
01:15Now, sometimes kids, as hard as it can be, and I've got four kids of my own,
01:18you know, sometimes they don't want to talk to mum and dad about their issues,
01:21but they may talk to, you know, a rugby league coach, a sports trainer, a secretary, a president,
01:26a trusted adult in their community.
01:27And that's what we want to, that's what we really want to highlight here and want to encourage is,
01:32you know, kids to, you know, kids to go outside of their comfort zone,
01:35kids to get an education, kids to get an understanding of what support options are out there
01:40and not just domestic violence in any parts of, in any parts of their life.
01:44Yeah, I think for our guys, obviously we're not the experts in the field of talking about domestic violence.
01:49I think it's more of just about encouraging young males and females to speak up.
01:54And I think this program does that through the opportunity of educating the students around domestic violence
02:01or if they see something going on or feel that, that they can feel confident to go and speak to those
02:07and those organisations after we come here, they get to know, so we're building relationships with them.