Dentsu-affiliated Aboriginal social change agency Cox Inall Ridgeway has launched an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention campaign in NSW.
The Heal Our Way campaign, funded by the NSW Ministry of Health under Towards Zero Suicides (TZS) initiative, aims to give NSW Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities the tools and skills to have safe conversations around suicide and to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to reach out for support and help.
Cox Inall Ridgeway, which is 51% Aboriginal-owned, co-designed the campaign working together with NSW Aboriginal communities, tapping into Australia’s First Nation’s 6,000 years of creative history to make a campaign that speaks to the resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.
https://www.youtube.com/user/COXINALLRIDGEWAY1
Cox Inall Ridgeway general manager Yatu Widders Hunt said: “The campaign is anchored in lived experience, this is fundamentally important for any campaign speaking to First Nations communities, but particularly so when tackling issues around mental health and suicide.
"The expertise, the knowledge and the history lives in our communities, not within agencies, at Cox Inall Ridgeway our role is to harness that and work in a collaborative way and that’s what we did.”
Cox Inall Ridgeway assembled a community advisory panel to ensure the campaign was honouring existing knowledge in First Nations communities and deliver materials that could better support them in having safe conversations around suicide.
The advisory team included Aboriginal psychologist Professor Pat Dudgeon, Tom Brideson former CEO of Gayaa Dhuwi and representatives from the Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association (AIPA), NSW Ministry of Health, Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council (AH&MRC) and Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations funded by TZS.
Vanessa Edwige, Cox Inall Ridgeway senior consultant and psychologist said: “First Nations communities have been told what to do for so long, this campaign is not about doing the same, rather it is about working with them around how to create something that works with the communities’ interests at heart.
“Suicide effects all communities, while it is a human issue, this campaign is about empowering our people to have safe conversations about what it means for our communities."
Heal Our Way is running across social media, directing audiences to an online hub with support tools and resources.
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