’Your Tribe’ women’s support group founder wins Woman of the Year
A woman’s support group founder, a high school netball coach and an advocate for African refugees have been honoured in the 2023 International Women’s Day Awards. See the gallery
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A woman’s support group founder, a high school netball coach and an advocate for African refugees have been honoured in Cairns’ 2023 International Women’s Day Awards.
Small business owner and founder of Your Tribe group, Jo Piggott, was presented the 2023 Woman of the Year award at Wednesday’s International Women’s Day event at the Pullman International Hotel.
Ms Piggott started Your Tribe walk and talks along the Esplanade in 2019 with the aim of providing an environment where women could “talk about anything or everything they wanted”.
“It’s amazing. I feel very humbled. I’m proud actually that I had women that stood beside me and helped me on this journey to create this supportive community,” Ms Piggott said.
Ms Piggott was inspired to start the group after suffering from an auto-immune disease that left her in hospital for five weeks and in recovery of 10 months.
“I had a lot of women coming into hospital every day every day to see me and once I was well I wanted to give back to the community so I started Your Tribe,” Ms Piggott said.
The free community initiative which started with one walk a week now boasts 750 members, bringing women of all backgrounds, age groups and social settings together.
Ms Piggott said it was important for women to have a safe space to talk and unwind.
“I didn’t realise when I started this how many people needed this. It’s just a private group on Facebook and it’s always amazed me how many people have reached out.
“I love watching everybody connect. There’s been so many friendships and we’ve been on so many adventures. Last year I took a group of ladies up to Cape York as an excuse to walk to the tip of Australia, so we’re always going on adventures together,” she said.
When 2023 Young Woman of the Year recipient Ashleigh Meikle saw she had been nominated for the award, she initially dismissed the email as a scam.
“I had no clue. I was in my room stressing over some assignment that I had to do and my mum came in said I’d been nominated and I was like what? Because I’d got the email about it a couple days before and honestly though it was a scam,” Miss Meikle said.
“Then when she told me about the awards and that I’d been nominated, it all clicked.”
A passionate netballer, 17-year-old Ashleigh Meikle has demonstrated a passion for developing other young players through coaching, mentoring and umpiring.
In 2022, her coaching efforts were recognised by her club the North Cairns Tigers whish named her a Coach of the Year in 2022 after she guided her under 14 team to the finals.
“I’ve played netball since I was five years old but lately I’ve got into umpiring a lot more. Coaching is pretty new for me, this is my third year but I’ve enjoyed it a lot,” Miss Meikle said.
The Year 12 student has represented Peninsula and Cairns at state competitions and helped to deliver the ‘Diamond Spirit’ program at Cairns State High School which uses netball and educational pathways to nurture and support the growth of Indigenous girls.
“When I was younger I was doing a lot of rep and stuff. My role models are the coaches I really loved and I guess want to be one of those coaches that kids really look up to and they love coming to netball. It motivates me to do my best,” Miss Meikle said.
Cairns African Association president Anna Jones received the 2023 Women’s $2000 Recognition Award for supporting refugees to feel safe and supported in the community.
As a migrant herself, she understands the challenges facing new arrivals and has used that experience to support others.
“What I do is really just to help migrants and resettles refugees to navigate the systems in Australia because the all come here with so many barriers,” Ms Jones said.
Ms Jones said her aim was to help migrants in the community with common barriers such as language, literacy, driving and digital banking.
“They all come here with skills so the mindset of our program is premised on our skills application program whereby we recognise the skills they already have. It could be cooking, cleaning, anything else.
“So we put them in volunteer spaces where they are engaged with a skill they already used whether back in the camps or at home and it becomes a career for them. When they get a job out of that, it is heartwarming for me to see,” Ms Jones said.
Ms Jones said the money from the scholarship would be used by the Cairns African Association to host its own Women’s Day event on March 18.
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Originally published as ’Your Tribe’ women’s support group founder wins Woman of the Year
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