Respect Ballarat is led by a set of principles developed in collaboration with the local co-design working group. They provide a framework to guide both the work that happens, and how we do the work together. The principles are not fixed and will be adapted alongside iterations of the work.
The principles will guide approaches to design and implementation, funding processes and local governance, as well as partnerships and collaboration.
Platform prevention as everyone’s responsibility
We put prevention in action across the whole community. This change belongs to all of us, and we work from a shared vision. We work across sectors, communities, and governments to build a sustainable, embedded community-wide prevention approach.
This principle encourages:
- strong, trusting relationships across sectors, communities and governments
- support for community-driven approaches to prevention that speak to local context
- sharing resources, knowledge and responsibility to support transparency and learning
- addressing the drivers of gendered violence across systems, organisations, communities and individuals to enact change.
Take a meaningful intersectional approach
We recognise and address the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and disadvantage that can exacerbate people’s experiences of gendered violence. These forms of oppression can include but are not limited to the impacts of colonisation, racism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia.
Taking a meaningful intersectional approach and moving beyond representation will strengthen prevention efforts and support sectors and communities to reflect, share and learn from each other.
This principle encourages:
- resourcing, partnering with and supporting organisations and communities who have historically experienced and continue to experience oppression and disadvantage
- tailored initiatives are designed and led by or in partnership with relevant communities
- organisations and leaders to deepen their commitment to meaningful intersectional practice through capacity building and knowledge-sharing
- governance and leadership roles through Respect Ballarat to be equitable and open to people from marginalised communities
- building trust and relationships with communities who are historically marginalised, including culturally and racially marginalised, LGBTIQA+, people with disabilities, and First Nations communities.
Embed lived experience perspectives
We make sure lived experience perspectives are safely embedded in shaping decisions, practice approaches, and what success looks like for Respect Ballarat. This will support a foundation for care and respect in this work and supports healing to occur across the community.
People with lived experience bring a critical perspective to design, implementation and learning in efforts to address gendered violence. It is important to centre those perspectives as we co-create trauma-responsive approaches to Respect Ballarat, which are a cornerstone of effective prevention work.
This principle encourages:
- meaningful opportunities for victim-survivors to inform decisions, design and bring expertise to local governance
- putting the insights and priorities of victim-survivors into action, with transparency and integrity
- recognising lived experience input through appropriate acknowledgement and compensation where appropriate
- being transparent about where lived experience has shaped decision-making.
Start with community strengths and strengthen with evidence
We start with what works and what is known in Ballarat and strengthen our approach with research and promising practice approaches, to build the evidence base. For Respect Ballarat to succeed, it must be designed and delivered using a place-based approach. Combining local knowledge and experiences with evidence and expertise will strengthen the work.
This principle encourages:
- translating evidence and practice approaches to support the local context in Ballarat
- iteration and evolution of the work to adapt to feedback, data, and evolving local context
- knowledge-sharing and capacity-building between local organisations, governments and communities to build a shared prevention approach
- drawing on diverse voices and experiences from across Ballarat, and remembering that communities are not homogenous
- supporting innovative practice and being brave to test creative ways of enacting community-wide change.
Learn and partner to build sustainable, long-term change
We are committed to the process of learning in partnership that creates the conditions for community leadership and ownership to grow. Preventing gendered violence is long-term work and requires commitment and investment from leaders and communities. By embedding long-term thinking that centres around learning and partnership, we anchor Respect Ballarat in what is required to seed change and carry it forward.
This principle encourages:
- shared decision-making and transparency with communities about how decisions have been made
- building the capability, skills and commitment of local leaders, both formal and informal
- creating opportunities for community-led learning, experimentation and innovation in service of sustainability
- surfacing difficult conversations and hard truths, and working to address them together
- working in partnership to build a movement that could inspire and inform other communities.
Strengthen connection and belonging
We support the strengthening of conditions for connection and belonging in Ballarat as foundational actions to support community healing, using a gender transformative lens. As a community, Ballarat has faced collective grief – both in recent years and historically. This principle reminds us that this work is deeply relational, and that social change requires connection, the building of new norms and community values, and a commitment to creating a community where everyone can be authentically themselves, free of harmful gender norms.
This principle encourages:
- supporting prevention work, infrastructure and approaches that reduce isolation and increase connection and belonging
- creating shared physical and online spaces that foster belonging and connection, for the whole community and tailored to specific communities
- resourcing prevention work that addresses both past and present trauma, and gives voice to those who have experienced harm
- supporting gender transformative prevention practice that allows people to be respected, safe, seen and free to be their full selves.