Penny Redshaw’s Motivating Giraffe brightens the lives of thousands of people around the world

PENNY Redshaw spreads messages of encouragement and hope around the globe week in, week out via her hand-drawn alter ego, Motivating Giraffe.

Penny Redshaw, is the girl behind Motivating Giraffe. Picture: Peter Cronin

WITH more than 20,000 subscribers across multiple social media platforms, Penny Redshaw spreads messages of encouragement and hope around the globe week in, week out via her hand-drawn alter ego, Motivating Giraffe.

“I got a message from a hostess from Malaysian Airlines after one of their planes crashed and she said my pictures helped her,” says Penny, whose sketches of Motivating Giraffe are accompanied by pithy, uplifting quotes. “I get a lot of feedback like that. It’s very special.”

Motivating Giraffe came to life as Penny was dealing with her own bout of depression several years ago while studying social science at university.

“A lot of my depression came from just seeing how terrible things can be in the world,” says the 23-year-old from Ipswich. “I wanted to counter that in my mind by drawing. I first tried a cat but realised I was no good at drawing cats and so I ended up doing the giraffe instead.”

The first picture she shared on Facebook — of Motivating Giraffe on rollerskates — was accompanied by the quotation “You’re doing great!” Penny never imagined just how great her lanky, dorky optimist would end up doing.

Penny Redshaw’s hand-drawn giraffe. Picture: Peter Cronin

“A friend saw it and said it was pretty cool and I just kept doing it from there,” says Penny, who also sometimes draws Motivating Giraffe with a little offsider called Pig.

Before long her massive following resulted in strangers donating money to a Kickstart campaign to have two books published, and now Penny is working on a Motivating Giraffe calendar for 2017.

Despite her enormous contribution to “just try to brighten peoples’ day”, Commbank’s Australian of the Day graduated from university and now has a job doing peer support in the mental health field.

“Motivating Giraffe is great but I also want to make an impact with people in a one-one-one sense because I know what it’s like to go through depression,” she says. “It’s important to have that contact — it’s just a fundamental part of being human.”

CommBank has partnered with News Corp Australia to champion the Australian of the Day initiative which celebrates people in our neighbourhoods and communities who really make a difference to how we live and who we are. You can read all their stories at australianoftheday.com.au, where you can also nominate someone you know.