My name is Adam Washbourne and I founded and run the charity Fighters against child abuse Australia. Our member Sarah Sweeny has asked me to drop you an email regarding what it is we do. We are a non profit charity founded with the singular goal of ending child abuse. To do this we intend to break the cycle of violence by putting kids who have survived child abuse into martial arts training. We sponsor the training and the equipment and any other needs that may arise for the child. This way the parents aren't out of pocket at all. We find that quite often kids who have been abused come from a lower socio-economic situation, while this is not always the case when it is we can help out. We approve the schools that take survivors on for us through a very rigorous approvals process. Every school that takes kids on for us not only teaches martial arts but teaches kids about goal setting and achievement. Our plan is for the survivors of child abuse to become successfull members of society rather then turning to drugs and violence. To date we have 67 kids under sponsorship, they are both boys and girls and their ages range from 4 - 19. We also offer escort programs for those who are have survived abuse and are now prosecuting thier attackers where as a FACAA volenteer goes to the court with the survivor and stays by their side, buys them a cup of coffe and generally supports them. We find this program quite benificial for survivors as they are often black listed by their families and friends particulary if the attacker is a family matriach or patriach. We also sponsor a lot of this countries top professional fighters. In exchange for the extra promotion we can offer them they wear our patch on their fight shorts and put our symbol on their fight banner. Some of them also participate in our other programs and take survivors on in their own schools which is awesome for the kids who are lucky enough as we currenttly have some UFC stars in our ranks. A couple of the fighters even go to schools and do mentoring programs and talks designed to show how wrong bullying is and that there is a much better way.
We started in May last year as an idea when a mate of mine had a local youth worker come down and plead with him to teach a free boxing class to kids who had survived child abuse, I knew a protein company who were coming up in the industry and were looking for a good cause to support so I gave them a call and they agreed to pay Lucas $200 a week to teach 2 classes, well when we both rocked up to teach the class the youth worker had put the word out to the other counsellors and there was 40 kids in the room. We were both blown away by the response. I rang around to a lot of other companies I knew and got their fees covered so Lucas could teach them 4 classes a week with two assistant instructors. He made a joke that I should be in every city and so I founded FACAA. He's the public face and I run the charity. I had no idea we would take off and get so many kids so quickly but we have. We have become so popular that we even have a waiting list to get kids into our programs, We are completely non exclusionary so we do not align ourselves with any political party or church group so our members are free to express themselves in anyway they see fit as long as it's not having a go at other members.
. Our website which is still being upgraded is www.facaaus.org . It has a link to our facebook page which you can join us on if you like, the more members we get the more clout we have with big business when we go and as them for sponsorship so if you could plug that we would appreciate it.
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