Recognised environmental and social impact leader Natalie Kyriacou OAM is helping spearhead a CARE Australia initiative that will celebrate women as global change-makers amid increasingly frequent conflicts and climate-related crises.
Kyriacou, alongside youth, gender, political advocator and campaigner Ashleigh Streeter-Jones, and award-winning magazine editor Justine Cullen, will champion the Her Circle initiative.
CARE Australia work in partnership with local communities around the world to provide equal opportunities for women.
With this global experience, CARE has found that women are the most impacted by poverty, conflict and disaster – but they can also be the key to overcoming it.
Last year, the group supported over 1.37 million people across 23 countries and delivered humanitarian assistance to more than 445,000 people in times of crisis.
Like in Vanuatu, where they are supporting diverse groups of women to build economic resilience, enabling communities to prepare for, adapt to, and recover from the impacts of climate change.
CARE recognise that ‘when one woman rises, she brings four others with her – also referred to as the ‘multiplier effect’.
“Women are often the invisible architects of social progress, their legacy lives in the communities that are rebuilt, the lives that are saved, and the societies that are safeguarded,” Kyriacou said in a media release.
“The great leaders of society have always been right in front of us, they were just cast into the shadows. In every thriving society, in every safeguarded community, you will undoubtedly find the footprints of the women who made it happen.”
Kyriacou is the founder and chair of My Green World, board member at the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife, a W20 Delegate and a UNESCO Pathfinder.
Head of Capability and Impact at CARE Australia Suzi Chinnery said that women around the world are “bearing the responsibility of increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and conflicts, which are exacerbated by rising economic inequality and climate change.”
“Our aim for this year’s Her Circle campaign is to demonstrate how, despite these adversities, women hold the solution to lift their families, communities, and the world out of poverty – a critical step in our path towards gender equality.”
Streeter-Jones says investing in women is crucial as it not only empowers them, but it is also key to easing poverty and creating global peace.
