Community
2 July, 2025
Handbags offer solace
TO support women impacted by domestic violence, Cassowary Coast councillor Trudy Tschui brought hope in a handbag – delivering 280 purses filled with essentials to help women and families begin again last May.
With 22,500 Domestic Violence Orders (DVO) lodged to Queensland courts in 2025 (up to April), domestic and family violence is a serious epidemic for Queenslanders and as someone personally affected by the crisis Cr Tschui knew something had to be done.
“I personally experienced this type of violence so I understand the significance of having nothing, being too scared to go back to your house to pack a bag and leave, so I wanted to give something back to people that would make them feel human again,” she said.
“This is a personal project unrelated to council. It was something I wanted to do and I started it in 2016 from my living room, packing handbags.
“Since then, we must’ve packed and delivered 1200 to 1300 handbags. This year I wanted to run it in May for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month and it has been a special year. I really felt the community’s soul and the bags were very personal.”
Ms Tschui said, although she didn’t meet the recipients of the bags, she had heard really positive feedback from police and support services.
“The project was inspired by ‘Share The Dignity’ and what I do is put the word out at Christmas time through social media posts, local radio station, my personal Facebook page and community pages to start thinking about it and by the end of April I organised drop off places across the Cassowary Coast for people to drop off bags, items and donations,” she said.
“Then we had a session in my house with volunteers where we packed the bags. This year we packed 280 and we take the bags to police stations, shelters in Cairns, support centres in Innisfail and Tully.
“Many of the bags get dropped off at the police and they have said to me that people are very grateful to receive them.
“The police have even called them ‘escape bags’ because many have to leave with nothing and now they have something to get started.”
With the next iteration of the ‘Handbag Project’ coming in 2027, Ms Tschui thanked the community and volunteers for their time and donations.
“I’m very grateful for the wonderful donations and the response we had from the community,” she said.
“My feeling looking at the handbags was that there were quite personal donations and there was a lot of thought into what items to include in them.”
