Should you be friends with your ex? Is jealousy a sign of love? and Wondering how to be good in bed?

Love: the good, the bad and the ugly (lovegoodbadugly.com ) answers these questions and more, with over 100 pages of advice, stories, and quizzes. Keep reading

Sex, Power and Consent: Youth culture and the unwritten rules is a new book by Dr Anastasia Powell – lecturer and researcher at LaTrobe University and keynote speaker at the recent PiP forum “For better and worse: young people, technology and preventing violence against women.” Keep reading

This is a presentation I delivered on Monday 26 July 2010 for a Family Planning Victoria forum on developing a state-wide sexuality educators network. Keep reading

The ‘No Means No Show’ Project Worker position at CASA House is currently being advertised online at  http://rwh.mhr.com.au/jobdetail.asp?jobid=111076   Keep reading

After many conversations, plans and hard work the new PiP website is finally here! The new website has a range of advantages including:

• Information on the site is dated so you will be able to tell how long it’s been here.
• There are a number of ways to browse the site – via the menus, the search box or the tag cloud.
• Visitors to the site can leave comments and discuss the information presented, add to it or update it.
• It has a whole new content management system which is much easier for me to use so I’ll be able to keep it fresh and publicise new happenings much more quickly.
• Data analysis on the old site showed that almost half the website visitors were people who had been here before. The new layout means that visitors to the site will immediately be presented with the latest PiP and youth PVAW sector news.

Hopefully PiP members will still be able to navigate around and find all the information that was available on the old site – if there’s anything missing or any mistakes please let me know.  Feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think!

A couple of people have emailed me job ads in the last week so in the interest of getting the info out quickly I’m posting them here:

• Office of Women’s Policy Project Officer
• Family Planning Victoria Project Officer

Keep reading

The Victorian Minister for Education, Bronwyn Pike, announced yesterday that the DEECD will be partnering with CASA House to deliver the respectful relationships demonstration project in schools. The project will be trialled in 4 schools before the middle of the year. Keep reading

The federal government’s ‘Plan to reduce violence against women – Immediate Government Actions’ states:

“the Australian Government will invest $9 million to improve the quality and uptake of respectful relationships programs nationally.”

It goes on to say that 6 programs have been selected to be piloted over 31 sites in school and non-school settings and that the South Australian Keeping Safe program will be evaluated.

A number of workers have approached me looking for more information about this money, what will be done with it and what it means for current projects. The information I can provide below is hearsay but will hopefully serve to allay fears and give workers some idea of where they stand.

Basically the $9 million will be to cover the next 5 years. The first year of the plan involves the 6 pilots but beyond that nothing has been set in concrete. An external evaluator will be contracted to over-see the evaluation of the pilots and there may be opportunities for other projects to volunteer for inclusion in the evaluation. (The contractor has not been engaged as yet so no promises.) The Office for the Status of Women is aware that there are many other respectful relationships projects running across the country and do not see these 6 as being the last word on primary prevention of violence against women with young people.

The OfSW’s plans for Restpectful Relationships Education over the remaining years will be somewhat defined by the outcome of the pilot evaluations. 

The OfSW are interested in hearing the concerns of workers in the field and learning more about projects/plans that are happening on the ground. So if you have concerns or questions or are running a project NOW would be a good time to write to Minister Tanya Plibersek so that the OfSW is aware of your needs and able to keep you in the loop about relevant developments.

Her address is:

The Hon Tanya Plibersek
Minister for the Status of Women
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

HINT: if you request a response of some kind they have to send you one.