Fight 4 Youth
$50,000 grant
Fight 4 Youth: Inner Strength, Fortify and emPOWER
Fight 4 Youth is a grassroots, community-based charity on the Gold Coast empowering young people to build confidence, resilience, and respect through life-skills, mentoring, and physical activity.
For ten years, we’ve worked alongside schools, police, and families to help youth to make positive changes that strengthen both themselves and their communities. For many years we have offered our programs for free by volunteering our time, fundraising, and applying for grants to cover costs.
Women & Change have given us hope to deliver Inner Strength (for girls), Fortify (for boys), and emPOWER (for mixed teens). Each program uses a different tool to engage and aid learning-including boxing, fitness, dance, art, and strength training – alongside structured life-skills sessions that include identity, values, boundaries, peer pressure, and healthy relationships. Sessions help young people find purpose, develop discipline, and contribute positively to their communities through service and teamwork.
What makes Fight 4 Youth stand out is that our programs don’t end when the sessions do -they open doors to more opportunities. A young person who joins The Suspension Project may go onto Inside Out, Inner Strength, emPOWER, or Fortify. After completing a program, most stay connected – attending after-school activities, such as art, boxing, or dance classes, or stepping into leadership roles as junior coaches and mentors. Each step builds stability, purpose, and connection. The Women & Change grant will allow Fight 4 Youth to expand these pathways, giving more young Queenslanders the chance to re-engage, belong, and thrive.
Instagram: @fight4youth_youthcentre
Precious Wings
$50,000 grant
Project Title: Bridging the Distance: Bereavement Support for Regional Families
Project Summary: When a baby or child dies, families have only a short time to create memories that last a lifetime. In those moments, the care they receive can shape their grief for years to come.
Precious Wings provides free Memory Boxes and bereavement resources to families and hospitals, helping parents make tangible memories, connect with another bereaved family, and honour their child’s life. The boxes also serve as a valuable tool for health professionals to gently guide and support families. Founded by a paediatric nurse whose own baby, Toby, was stillborn, we now partner with more than 60 hospitals and health services across Queensland.
In regional and rural areas, families and health professionals are often left without the training, resources, or support available in larger hospitals. Health professionals frequently share their frustration at wanting to help but not having the tools or knowledge to do so.
This project will deliver hands-on, trauma-informed education to five regional hubs: Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton, Mackay, and Mount Isa-giving staff the confidence and skills to provide compassionate, consistent care. Our education team combines expertise across maternity, paediatric palliative care, and emergency medicine with lived experience of loss, creating a unique and powerful model for education and support.
We’ll also host evening peer-support sessions where bereaved parents and siblings can connect and make memory boxes for others—turning pain into purpose.
Together, we can bring light and compassion into families’ darkest moments and empower health professionals to provide this essential care with confidence and heart.
Anglicare, Toowong Women’s Shelter
$9,500 grant
Uplift and Elevate: Restoring the Play & Grow Centre
At Anglicare Southern Queensland’s Toowong Women’s Shelter, hundreds of women and children find refuge each year after escaping violence and instability. It is a place where safety and dignity come first, and where mothers can finally exhale and begin to rebuild their lives.
At the heart of the shelter is the Play & Grow Centre, a small and joyful space where children can play freely and mothers can connect, learn, and heal. For families recovering from trauma, it is often the first place they rediscover laughter, trust, and a sense of normal life.
Sadly, the Centre has been forced to close. Severe mould damage and the effects of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred destroyed much of the furniture, toys, and flooring, leaving the space unsafe and unusable.
Through the Uplift and Elevate Project, Anglicare plans to restore and renew the Play & Grow Centre by replacing damaged flooring, repainting walls, improving ventilation, and refurnishing the space with safe and welcoming materials. Once complete, the Centre will again be a haven for hundreds of families over the next decade.
This project is about much more than repairing a room. It is about restoring hope and giving mothers and children a safe place to play, learn, and begin again.
Women and Change can help bring this special place back to life, uplifting every woman and child who walks through its doors.
Website: Anglicare Southern Qld
Facebook: Anglicare Southern Qld
LinkedIn: Anglicare Southern Qld
Community Living Association
$9,500 grant
Parenting to Thrive’, together we survive
We are a group of mums with intellectual disability. We formed this group to create a supportive network to uplift each other. We often face difficult things.
The label ‘intellectual disability’ is misunderstood. People think we can’t understand or parent. But we are strong, determined and love our kids.
The Disability Royal Commission into violence, abuse and neglect found parents with intellectual disability aren’t treated fairly. We don’t get the support we need to parent.
Parents feel silenced, scared and judged.
With the right support our families can thrive. Having a safe space to learn and grow helps us to be good parents!
We own our group and make all the decisions. We work on parenting, safe relationships, and learning new skills. We support each other and have learnt to speak up!
We are learning to run groups. We do research and share our knowledge to help create system change. This is our first grant! We are very proud of our work.
We have achieved so much. We band together to support each other. We feel more confident, connected and happy. We are good role models for our kids.
We would like to use the Women and Change grant to help other mum’s set up support networks. There are no other supports for parents with intellectual disabilities in South East Queensland.
We will run weekly groups to learn new skills to make a book for other groups.
We will meet other mum’s and support them to start their own groups with their supporters and allies.
We will help more mum’s learn to share, reach out for help and to speak up when they need help.
Together we will hold a forum to share with workers how they can best support us and our families.
When mum’s are supported to learn new things and feel confident, their families are supported. Mum’s and their children feel safe and connected.
Our project will help more mums with intellectual disability feel safe, included, connected and uplifted, so they can be the best mum’s they can be!