Rotary SAFE Families is both a national and international primary prevention initiative dedicated to preventing family abuse before it starts. Founded in 2018 by Dorothy Gilmour, then a member of Rotary Melbourne and now President of Rotary Hawthorn, the program is built on a simple but powerful conviction: family violence is preventable, and the most effective place to prevent it is in the attitudes and behaviours young people form long before they ever enter an adult relationship.
Most responses to family violence are, understandably, built around crisis — refuges, legal aid, and police intervention exist because families are already in danger. Rotary SAFE Families takes a different starting point. the program works upstream, reaching people well before harmful patterns take root, and giving entire communities — not just individuals in crisis — the language, confidence, and knowledge to recognise abuse and respond to it safely.
This distinction matters. Prevention is not the same as intervention, and it cannot be delivered in the same way. It requires patient, sustained community education rather than a single response to a single incident. It requires reaching people in their own languages, in their own cultural contexts, and in settings where they already feel safe — schools, community halls, places of worship, and cultural associations.
What We Do and Who Is Involved The 3R's of Prevention
At the centre of SAFE Families is a simple, practical framework: the 3R's of Prevention — Recognise, Raise, Refer. It is designed to be usable by anyone, anywhere, at any time, regardless of their professional background or prior knowledge of family violence.
The strength of the 3R's lies in its simplicity. It does not require specialist training to use — it requires awareness, willingness, and a clear, memorable structure. That accessibility is precisely why it has proven effective as a tool for community-wide primary prevention, rather than a program limited to professionals in the family violence sector.
Resources: The Guide and Films
To support the 3R's in practice, Rotary SAFE Families has produced a suite of freely available, practical resources. Our Guide for Prevention of Family Abuse has been translated into 9 languages.
Alongside the Guide, Rotary SAFE Families offers a series of films addressing: Male Abuse, Child Abuse, Elder Abuse, and Domestic Violence and Its Impact on Children. Each has been developed to open conversations on topics that are frequently stigmatised, misunderstood, or simply avoided.
All resources are freely down loadable via our website, www.rotarysafefamilies.org.au. This is intentional: the ambition of Rotary SAFE Families is not to restrict this knowledge to specialists, but to place it directly in the hands of anyone who might one day need to recognise abuse, safely raise it with someone they know, and refer them to the right support.
Partnerships That Extend Our Reach
No prevention initiative of this scale succeeds on the efforts of one person or one club alone. Rotary SAFE Families has grown through a network of partnerships that combine community trust, professional expertise, and institutional support:
The Impact on Our Communities
Many of our workshops have been gratefully received by African and Indian Australian communities, particularly around the often-misunderstood crime of child abuse in Australia. In communities where such topics are rarely discussed openly, or where cultural stigma has historically silenced conversation, SAFE Families workshops have provided a safe, respectful, and non-judgemental space to engage with an issue that affects every community, regardless of background.
Perhaps the clearest signal of the program's impact is what is now happening at the District level. Rotary Districts are increasingly asking to become ambassadors for Rotary SAFE Families, seeking to unite behind a single, stronger, shared voice — one that carries the message that we all have a role to play in the primary prevention of abuse, not just professionals or crisis services. This shift, from individual clubs adopting the program to entire Districts seeking to champion it, represents a maturing of the initiative from a grassroots prevention program into a genuine movement within Rotary.
It is also worth naming what this impact prevents, not just what it produces. Every conversation that happens early — before abuse escalates, before a child grows up believing harmful patterns are normal, before a family in crisis has nowhere to turn because no one around them recognised the warning signs — is a crisis intervention that Rotary SAFE Families has helped a community avoid altogether.
Looking Ahead
As Rotary Districts across Australia move to formalise their role as ambassadors for Rotary SAFE Families, the program is entering a new phase — one defined less by individual club adoption and more by coordinated, District-wide advocacy for primary prevention.
Our Towards Respectful Relationships Program which gives Year 10 students the opportunity to talk with other young people about respect relationships versus the traumatic impact of abusive relationships through the medium of film.
With the guidance of a film maker, Victoria Police Family Violence Liaison Officers, Rotarians and a Rotary SAFE Families Facilitator, the students create discussion, write a script in small groups of 3, act, film and edit their films ready for judging and Awards.
Rotary SAFE Families ambition remains the same as it was at the outset: to ensure that every Rotarian, every community member, and every family — regardless of language, culture, or background — has access to the knowledge and tools needed to recognise abuse, raise a conversation “safely”, and refer those affected to the support they need.
