Last guest speaker was Gabe Hau.  That's him at left in a happy snap from his AG visit to us a little while back.  He was always heavily involved in Rotary, working in, leading and promoting its projects and obviously still is.

 Currently District Foundation Co-Coordinator among other things, he showed  a much more sober and serious side in his address. No smiles here as he talked to us on the statistics , and efforts in Australia and Rotary to combat,  Family Violence.  

Gabe recently joined the Board of  Violence Free Families (VFF) which was formed in 2009 to focus in more dedicated ways on the prevention of family violence.   It stems from a Brighton Rotary project started in 1995 and has become an independent national charity since 2009. It is funded by Rotary clubs, and other donations and being staffed by volunteers  has minimal overheads. 

Its current prime positive impact is through an online men's behavior change program.  A world first approach Gabe described how it worked. Essentially it is a group education session but on line (14 weeks at 2 hours each time) lead by two facilitators. It seemed to the author to derive its success from the mutual self realization of the unacceptable past behavior of attendees and techniques for modification.  

Gabe stressed that it did not necessarily seek to retrieve a broken relationship, one outcome could be just a satisfactory and rational separation.   He was pleased to report of some successful outcomes with individuals who had attended the program.  Of course he remarked it is not a one course cure, but rather a precursor to ongoing efforts.

We touched on statistics and research.  Some of the statistics on violence many sourced from police reports  (and there are many aspects of bullying or violence, verbal, physical, psychological, economic, social, cyber and sexual) were astounding as to the prevalence of the problem in our society (references to 1 in 4 males , and 800,000 women / 1,500,000 children victims). 

Essential to VFF's ongoing work is a longitudinal research project with Monash University, looking into the long term outcomes of men’s behavior change program and whether or not they do make a real difference to families and children’s lives.  

Outcomes of this Monash research help direct scarce resources and helps VFF lobby governments, of all persuasions, and philanthropic funds to invest in family violence prevention.

No news.

Remember, please: Geoff Wright collates attendance information.  So please tell him of  "make up " events which we attend.

With the changing of the guard now also, please tell John Christoffelsz by Friday noon of any expected absence from lunch on Tuesday.  

(Late or non apologies can raise our catering costs.) 

Furthermore, please alert John to any attending guests so that he can include them in his estimate for the Kooyong caterers, and prepare name tags.