To say Sally Nicholes is passionate about children’s rights would
be something of an understatement!
Having been a partner in Middletons Lawyers for four years, and a Solicitor
and Senior Associate at this large corporate firm for a further seven years,
Sally gained both experience and awareness of corporate social responsibility.
This experience, coupled with her exposure to the plight of children in
Family Law disputes, inspired her to commit to a significant allocation
of time and resources to projects that promote the welfare of children.
These projects, on an international scale as well as domestic, cover fields
as diverse as international child abduction, inter-country adoption, child
sex tourism, and the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCROC).
Sally is on the board of the following foundations and organisations:
Lasallian Foundation — www.lasallianfoundation.org
Children’s Rights International — www.childjustice.org
World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights
— www.lawrights.asn.au
In addition Sally is a member of:
The Law Institute of Victoria
The Children & Youth Issues Committee of the Law Institute of Victoria.
The Family Law Section of the Family Law Council of Australia.
Youth and children’s organization The Oaktree Foundation
— www.theoaktree.org
The Lasallian Foundation.
The Lasallian Foundation supports projects throughout the Asia-Pacific
region that provide poor and disadvantaged children with an opportunity
to break the poverty cycle.
Established in 2004 by the De La Salle Brothers of Australia, New Zealand
and Papua New Guinea, it’s the latest in a series of innovative projects
across Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan.
The Foundation’s main beneficiaries are children in the most impoverished
situations who are affected by AIDS, lack of
access to education, lack of basic amenities – and often living with
no parents.
Driving force behind the Foundation is Brother Paul Smith, founder of Kids
Helpline and now CEO of the Lasallian Foundation.
(Kids Helpline operates through a toll-free number to provide qualified
psychologists, who answer calls from distressed children Australia wide.)
Projects vary widely, but recent achievements include the
construction of schools and orphanages, the provision of wells, pumping
and sanitation equipment, and tsunami relief.
World Congress on Family Law
and Children’s Rights.
The 1st World Congress on Family Law and Children's Rights was launched
in Sydney in July 1993, after three years of work initiated by the Honourable
Justice Rodney K. Burr AM and Sydney solicitor Stuart
Fowler.
They had been prompted to do so after being invited to Hong Kong to address
the Council of LAWASIA, an association which represents
lawyers and lawyers' organisations in some 21 countries in the Asian and
Pacific region. At that meeting the Council of LAWASIA asked them to accept a brief for the human rights of families and children
in the Asian and Pacific region.
The daunting challenge was accompanied by horror stories about the desperate
plight of hundreds of thousands of children who were being forced into prostitution
and child labour, forcibly adopted, mutilated for the purposes of begging,
or decimated by AIDS.
From its inception, the World Congress was designed and promoted to achieve
outcomes, not to be simply a ‘talk fest’. Over 850 delegates
from 54 countries of the world answered the initial challenge in Sydney,
drafting solutions and remedies to establish the momentum for change.
Four Congresses have now been held, with the fifth planned
for Canada in 2009. It is recognised as one of the most significant events
on the world calendar in promoting the protection of children, having received
a United Nations Award for services to the family, and the hope of achieving
beneficial change for many of the world's children now seems attainable.
Children’s Rights International.
Children’s Rights International (CRI) was
established at the 2001
World Congress on Family Law & Children’s Rights at Bath,
England, to promote and protect the interests of the most vulnerable amongst
us, our children and youth.
CRI aims to bring together judges, lawyers, psychologists,
medical practitioners, mediators, counsellors, mental health workers, media
representatives, child carers, teachers & allied professionals to provide
assistance to children through a twofold focus on education and legal advocacy.
In both of these functions the Congress seeks the active
support of professionals able to contribute time, expertise and other resources.
The Oaktree Foundation.
The Oaktree Foundation is an entirely youth-run aid and development organization,
driven by young people under the age of 26. The Foundation works on the
philosophy that education is the key to making lasting change. Its mission
is to empower developing communities through education in a way that is
sustainable.
In a world where it’s easy to be reduced to making token responses
to poverty, the Oaktree Foundation passes responsibility to the young leaders
of the future, encouraging them not to merely talk about change, but create
it. It’s about young people standing up to take action.
Nicholes Family Lawyers has already committed to its role with the Oaktree
Foundation: within its first month a project was submitted by NFL to support youth in AIDS-stricken Kwa Zulu (Natal,
South Africa), in partnership with Oaktree.
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