Thursday, 19 March 2026

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:03): Today I just want to acknowledge the incredible work of an organisation called You Matter. You Matter supports women and children who have experienced family violence by supplying them with everything they need to build a permanent home that they can be proud of. What they do is they create what are called ‘havens of hope’ by using different furniture and different aspects that you need to create a new life that these people can be proud of. There are three staff members that are paid, and there are over a hundred volunteers that give of their time purely to do something wonderful for somebody that has been through something terrible in their life. When the woman comes in, the first thing they do is they sit down, they get to know what that person loves, what their dream house would look like, their favourite colours and these sorts of things. Then what happens is all of these different volunteers go to work to create that space for these women. I was able to sit down with about 10 of the people in the organisation to hear some of their stories and what drives them to make them do this. I just want to shout-out to Deborah de Rossi, the CEO; Miriam Bugden, the manager of service operations; Paul Telford, the manager of warehouse operations; Chris Pappas, the coordinator of creative content; Kelsey Smith, coordinator of volunteer engagement – I have got more – Marie Howard, the haven coordinator; Michael Howard, collections crew; and Catherine Scott, warehouse assistant. Thank you so much for what you do.