What happens next?
Deni MHAG recently won a prestigious statewide award in Sydney at the annual Wayahead Mental Health Awards.
We were announced as joint winners of the Commissioner's Community Champion Awards for organisations; a category which attracted over 60 nominations.
We could not be prouder of this award and for the recognition our group has received. The work we have done over the past 21 years remains our passion and it is incredible and humbling to be recognised by our peers at a state level.
We are particularly excited that this award increases our visibility and the platform to keep advocating for more funding and resources for local communities to have information specific to them.
In accepting the award ,we highlighted the importance of sufficient funding and resourcing in the early intervention and awareness space; as well as the importance of funding to groups like ours to create paid positions to do this work. Our message was strong that this important part of making sure communities are empowered, cannot just rely on volunteers.
The Honourable Rose Jackson MP, Minister for Mental Health was a guest speaker at the event. Part of her messaging was to reassure attendees that the government was listening.
Whilst we were unable to have a direct conversation with her on the day, we have sent another letter of invitation to her. Inviting her to visit Deniliquin and to showcase our work as a model which we know can work for other rural and regional communities, if adequately funded.
In this letter we highlighted our collaboration with many groups and services across our community. Also being the Minister for Housing, Homelessness, Youth and Water - we believed that a visit to a rural area where there are significant issues in all of this space, could be extremely beneficial and a great deal could be learnt and listened to. We have not yet received a response, but we are hopeful for a positive outcome.
We now look forward to a visit from the Mental Health Commission of NSW who indicated they would be travelling to Deni to visit and to do some promotional material on Deni MHAG and our achievements.
In the meantime, we continue our work as a charity and volunteers, knowing we are making a difference in our community.
Anyone wanting to support or donate to our work can do so by going to this link https://www.justgiving.com/DMHAG
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