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About the Innovation Lab
The Violence Prevention Innovation Lab is the first of its kind in Australia, with a mission to identify and strengthen transformative approaches to preventing gender-based violence.
Funded through a $7.5 million, 3-year philanthropic partnership with Minderoo Foundation, the Lab will enable partners to better test, evaluate, scale and embed promising primary prevention thinking into community-led action.
In 2026-27, the Lab will focus on accelerating evidence-based community projects through a suite of Innovation and Impact Challenge grants.
Grant updates
Our Watch is pleased to announce the first cohort of successful grant recipients of the Violence Prevention Innovation Lab’s Building Connections Challenge. This cohort commenced in the Lab’s design incubator in February 2026.
Dads Group
SSI
New Story Company
YLAB
One Vision Productions
Engender Equality
The 6 grantees represent a diverse range of new, community-led primary prevention initiatives across performing arts, maternal and child health, new fathers, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous-led and multicultural cohorts, and initiatives that support young people.
A further round of grant recipients will enter the design incubator in May 2026. These projects have a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led work. More information on these grant recipients and their projects will be announced soon.
In the news
Check out the latest articles featuring the Lab:
Innovation lab rethinks violence prevention | Today
Starting Your Innovation Journey | Shackleton Labs
Contact the Lab
For inquiries about the Violence Prevention Innovation Lab get in touch with us via innovation.projects@ourwatch.org.au.
The team would love to hear from potential new funders and collaborators.
Grantee projects
Dads Group
Project title: DadConnect
Project location: Queensland
DadConnect is a 12-month hybrid digital and place-based capability pilot that supports men and boys to build respectful, positive, gender-equal relationships. This is done by strengthening relational capability in fathers and building the workforce’s confidence and skill to engage men safely and effectively during the perinatal period.
SSI
Project title: Migrant and Refugee Fathers Project
Project location: Queensland
This project will bring together and facilitate a group of young fathers from migrant and refugee communities to explore and articulate what works and resonates in supporting young migrant and refugee men. This is particularly in the context of becoming fathers, to foster respectful, gender-equal relationships and challenge rigid ideas of masculinity.
New Story Company
Project title: Two Plays Project
Project location: Tasmania
Two playwrights will collaborate using a community engaged framework to write the performance scripts of two new plays about male violence against women and children, one told from a female perspective and one from a male perspective.
The plays will challenge rigid stereotypes of masculinity and provide a sense of both the problem and the possible solutions for audiences to be inspired by. New Story Company will also produce play readings, with follow-on community discussion sessions about the issues raised.
One Vision Productions
Project title: MPOWER PRO: FlowCoach AI
Project location: NSW and national
MPOWER PRO incorporating FlowCoach AI meets young men through hip hop – a language they already speak. This Indigenous-led platform uses artificial intelligence coaching to guide young people through songwriting as a pathway to emotional wellbeing. As they create, they develop emotional regulation skills, practice self-reflection, and build agency. The technology allows culturally grounded support to reach young men at scale, particularly those who don't engage with traditional services.
YLAB
Project title: The First 100
Project location: Victoria
The First 100 is a youth-led, community-driven social media project designed to help parents and young people have conversations about what healthy digital masculinity looks like today.
Engender Equality
Project title: Support for fathers of trans/LGBTIQA+ young people
Project location: Tasmania
The project will form a framework of support for fathers of trans/LGBTIQA+ young people to parent in gender affirming, equitable ways. Facilitated by a peer with relevant professional experience, the fathers will share parenting and family experiences through discussions of topics related to stereotypes of masculinity and fatherhood, and their interaction with cisgenderism, cisnormativity and homophobia. The group will focus on ways to individually and collectively challenge rigid masculinity stereotypes and limited understandings of gender in not only themselves, but interpersonal and community contexts.
Related
Diverse local not-for-profit projects announced as first Violence Prevention Innovation Lab grantees
Posted at undefined
The grantees represent a broad range of new, community-led primary prevention initiatives across a diverse selection of organisations.
The first of its kind Violence Prevention Innovation Lab will shortly launch in Australia to identify and strengthen transformative gender-based violence prevention approaches.