Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent Program (2022 - 2025)
Why Yes Matters is one of the 13 projects created as part of the Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent (SYPTUAC) Program. The SYPTUAC program aims to empower and educate young people and their key influencers to strengthen their understanding of affirmative consent and healthy relationships.
Why Yes Matters
Why Yes Matters by the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights (AMWCHR) is designed to raise awareness and understanding of affirmative consent and sexual violence prevention within newly arrived and migrant Muslim communities across Melbourne. Our project focuses on empowering young people aged 16–22 and their families, especially parents, to engage in open, culturally safe conversations about affirmative consent, respectful relationships, and help-seeking.
Key project activities include:
Youth Workshops: Interactive sessions with Muslim young people to build knowledge about affirmative consent laws and equip them with knowledge to make informed decisions.
Parenting Programs: A four-session program for Muslim mothers providing tools to talk about consent, raise respectful children, and address cultural and gender-related challenges on issues of relationships, marriage and consent.
Muslim Youth Advisory Group: A diverse group of young Muslim women guides project development and community engagement, ensuring the project resonates with youth voices.
Accessible Resources: Creation and distribution of culturally relevant written and audio-visual materials, shared via social media and community networks to reach Muslim women and youth, including those with low literacy.
Community-Centred Delivery: AMWCHR recruits participants using trusted networks and adapts all content and delivery methods to language, literacy, and cultural needs. Practical supports such as childminding, transport, accessible venues, and catering are provided to ensure inclusivity for all programs where needed.
Through this project, Why Yes Matters aims to break down stigma, improve consent literacy, and create safer spaces for Muslim young people and their families to discuss these important issues confidently.
We welcome your support and collaboration to amplify this vital work within our communities.
Contact us for collaborations and information at: reception@amwchr.org.au or by calling 03 9481 3000.
You can find our more about AMWCHR at www.amwchr.org.au or at @amwchr on instagram.
Banksia Gardens Community Services
Good People Act Now (GPAN)
A youth-led action group working to promote gender equality and prevent gender-based violence in Hume and surrounds. GPAN focuses on peer-to-peer bystander action, equipping young people with tools to safely challenge harmful beliefs and attitudes.
Body Safety Australia
Image-based Autonomy: Creating Digital Upstanders
A project that aims to capture young people’s experiences and perspectives around their use of digital technology, with a particular focus on image taking, sharing and editing. It will pilot effective approaches to meaningful online safety education.
Centre Against Sexual Assault Central Victoria
Young People as Agents of Change
A project that aims to capture young people’s experiences and perspectives around their use of digital technology, with a particular focus on image taking, sharing and editing. It will pilot effective approaches to meaningful online safety education.
The Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent Program is supported by the Victorian Government.
Accessing sexual violence support
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, there are specialist sexual assault services across Victoria that provide free and confidential counselling and advocacy support for people of all ages.
You can find your local service by using the Specialist Sexual Assault Service Map.
If you have experienced a recent sexual assault, you can call the Sexual Assault Crisis Line (SACL) on 1800 806 292.
SACL operates between 5pm - 9am on weeknights and throughout weekends and public holidays. During office hours, the line will divert to your local specialist sexual assault service.
