2024 Equality Prize Recipient: Angelina Inthavong – Breaking barriers in reproductive health advocacy
Angelina Inthavong has emerged as a powerful voice in reproductive health advocacy, using her personal platform to create meaningful change in how society approaches women's health issues.
Angelina has been actively promoting reproductive health awareness through her partnership with Reproductive Equality Australia. In a groundbreaking approach to health advocacy, she has documented her own contraception journey, openly sharing the various physical, emotional, and psychological effects of female contraception.
'By documenting her journey she has given permission to others to be more comfortable in their own contraception and reproductive health journey, and by extension in themselves', her nominator explained. 'Aside from recording her journey on contraception, these posts have also helped to provide valuable information to her viewers that they can then apply in their own lives.'
Angelina's advocacy extends beyond reproductive health into violence prevention. She played an active role in organising, promoting, and running the National Rally Against Violence in late July 2024, where she delivered a passionate speech calling for an end to violence against women. Her address specifically challenged the government to enact legislative changes to make Australia a safer place, free from targeted violence.
Her involvement in the rally stretched far beyond speaking, as she worked tirelessly to promote the event across Australia, ensuring maximum attendance and lending credibility to the movement's arguments for systemic change.
For her work in the reproductive health awareness and advocacy sphere, Angelina was awarded the 2024 Emerging Leader Equality Prize.
2024 Equality Prize Recipient: Steph Evans – A decade of environmental justice and Indigenous advocacy
Recipient of the 2024 Emerging Leader Equality Prize, Steph Evans represents the power of youth-driven activism, having founded her organisation Seas of Change in 2014 at just 10 years old. For nearly a decade, Steph has championed environmental protection, human rights, and education through her entirely self-driven initiative, running the organisation until she was 19.
Through Seas of Change, she raised funds and awareness for marine life protection, specifically focusing on dugongs, sea turtles, plastic pollution, and climate change. Her fundraising efforts supported Dr Janet Lanyon's dugong health checks, bushfire relief during the devastating 2019/2020 fires, and the Australian Seabird Rescue.
'Starting Seas of Change at such a young age meant that I wanted to emphasise the power of youth to make a tangible change, no matter their age', she says. She developed and ran programs within schools and at events, educating thousands of students in Australia and around the world on environmental issues while providing mentoring opportunities.
Her environmental advocacy earned her remarkable opportunities, including attending dugong health checks with Dr Janet Lanyon from the University of Queensland, participating in the Ocean Heroes Boot Camp in Vancouver, Canada, and serving as a squad leader for Australia in 2020 and 2021.
As a Wiradjuri woman who grew up disconnected from her culture, Steph has courageously stepped into Indigenous advocacy. ‘My story as a Wiradjuri woman is long and unusual, as I grew up disconnected from my culture! Stepping into this identity at 16 has been challenging, but moving to Burgmann and having the support of Tjabal and Prof Asmi [Wood] has been a true gift’, she reflects.
After receiving a 2021 Nanga Mai Award for Student Leadership, Steph was invited to the DEL conference to acknowledge country and share her Indigenous story with the NSW Department of Education. More recently, as a member of the 2023 and 2024 Micah Women's Delegation, she met with MPs to discuss the 'Safer World for All' Campaign and spoke to national church leaders about cultural safety and the changes needed in religious institutions.
Steph works at the Attorney General's Department in the National Office for Child Safety, focusing on projects to increase resources for front-line workers and develop offender rehabilitation programs.
