Community Matters

What do a pair of cherry-red boots and a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease have in common? For David Morgan Williams AM, quite a lot, as it turns out. In this episode of Community Matters, Nicky Sloan sits down with well-known Illawarra businessman and community advocate David Morgan Williams AM for an open, honest and often humorous conversation about living with dementia, challenging stigma, and continuing to make a difference. David shares his experience of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's ...

In this episode of Community Matters, Nicky Sloan sits down with Dr Rosina McAlpine, author, researcher and educator, work and family wellbeing expert and the founder of Win Win Parenting, to explore why working parents are experiencing such high levels of stress, overwhelm and burnout, and what we need to do about it. “We're asking working parents to work like they don't have a family, and we're asking them to raise a family like they don't need to work”, says Dr Rosina. The statistic...

Every year, 1.7 million tonnes of food are wasted in NSW, the equivalent of 68 Olympic-size swimming pools. Meanwhile, 38% of households in the Illawarra Shoalhaven region are struggling to get enough to eat, with children going to school hungry and parents heading to work on an empty stomach. In this episode, Nicky Sloan speaks with Melinda Lawton, Project Manager at Healthy Cities Australia, about a practical plan to close that gap. Australia produces enough food to feed its people, yet it ...

In this episode, Nicky sits down with Kylie Flament, the CEO of SECNA (Social Enterprises Coordinating Council of NSW & ACT), the peak body supporting social enterprises across NSW and the ACT. Kylie has a memorable way of explaining what a social enterprise is: "If a business and a charity had a baby, that's a social enterprise… they exist specifically to make the world a better place." We learn that social enterprises contribute as much to the economy each year as the mining sector, and...

Menopause affects 51% of the population directly (and 100% of us indirectly) so it’s a topic we really need to get better at talking about. In this episode, Nicky does just that as she sits down with Georgia Watson, Menopause Service Coordinator for the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, for a frank, refreshingly practical conversation about what menopause actually looks like, and the specialist support available for women navigating it. The numbers are eye-opening. While the average...