With special guest:
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Gerry Georgatos
… in conversation with Bill Kable
We are honoured today to have as our special guest a social warrior, Gerry Georgatos. Gerry is the founder of the National Suicide Prevention & Trauma Recovery Project (the Project) set up in 2019. His colleague Megan Krakouer appeared recently on The Drum to talk about the work Gerry and she are doing with young Aboriginal offenders in Western Australian prisons. Footage has emerged of young children being hog-tied by prison guards and Megan spoke of the need for help.
Gerry Georgatos has remained constant as a social justice and human rights campaigner. His social justice and human rights campaigns began at an early age, from 11 years of age. From that young age he would represent workers of migrant Greek backgrounds, victims of asbestosis – mesothelioma – who struggled with the English language.
Gerry’s human rights and social justice work was inspired by his parents’ tireless contributions to the Greek community and in positively responding to the racial and cultural divides that were the profound experiences of his parents and his own.
During the last decade, he has dedicated himself to suicide prevention. Gerry Georgatos has been responsible for pushing onto the national landscape the extensiveness of the suicide crises among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Gerry has been to many, many families suffering from suicide of a member when every single one is a tragedy. The youngest suicide victim was only 9 years old.
Because of his research, public campaigns and face to face lobbying of Federal Ministers, Gerry was able to craft and launch national responses, including the Project.
Gerry Georgatos secured adequate funding for the Project from the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, and then willed the project away to strong Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders who went from strength to strength crafting the ways forward. Gerry Georgatos was one of the project’s team and with colleagues travelled the nation in suicide prevention community consultations, research and in urging the ways forward. Because of the Project there is now work towards toward developing real time data, notification protocols and evaluation tools in what works.
Gerry also fronted on the ground a Commonwealth Government tasked one year pilot in 2016, a critical response to suicide affected families. The success of this project led to the establishment of the National Indigenous Critical Response Service (NICRS). Gerry was the founding national coordinator of the NICRS’s Critical Response Support Advocates (the responders).
Gerry Georgatos cultivated significant media coverage and combined this coverage with his representations to governments to produce results. From 2012 to 2015, he published in the public domain more than 300 articles on the suicide crises and on suicide prevention.
He has a long history working closely and alongside the homeless, the most vulnerable and the incarcerated.
His qualifications include – MA in Social Justice Advocacy (Murdoch University), Master in Human Rights (Curtin University), GradDip in Human Rights Education (Curtin University), BA in Philosophy, BA in Media, BA in Australian Indigenous Studies.
Song selection by our guest: From Little Things Big Things Grow by Paul Kelly