The people who stand alongside us

Wundirra was born from eight years of grounded, community-led work under the name Deadly Connections Community and Justice Services Ltd, named ABSEC Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation of the Year in 2020.

That work showed us something we could not ignore: individual service delivery alone was never going to be enough to change the systems shaping people’s lives. So Wundirra was developed to go deeper, into the specific needs of communities facing the greatest systemic harm, and broader, building the capacity of the whole ecosystem around them.

The move to Wundirra is not a departure from that purpose. It is a deepening of it: a dedicated Aboriginal women-led organisation, grounded in Matriarchal principles, culture, strength, leadership, and self-determination.

Over that time, Deadly Connections built a track record communities and the sector recognised. Programs like Deadly Families, Youth Frontiers, Breaking the Cycle, Bugmy Project, Walanmarra, and Deadly Brothers worked directly with Aboriginal men, women, families, children, and young people at the sharpest points of systemic racism, disadvantage, justice involvement/impact, child removal, incarceration, violence, and intergenerational trauma. The organisation built relationships with communities across Sydney and consistently showed up where other services did not reach.

The consistent voices of the women leading us and in other spaces, in addition to the women we walked alongside, and our own lived and professional experience, pointed to something that could not be ignored. The systems that shape women’s lives, domestic violence, child protection, the criminal legal system, housing, economic exclusion, and health, were not adequately responding to the needs of women navigating them. Not just Aboriginal women. All women who fall into the space where systems intersect and fail.

We shifted from a predominantly frontline service model toward capacity building, consultancy, training, community development, and systems change. Not because direct support does not matter, but because sustainable change requires more than one organisation showing up. It requires the whole system and sector to be and do better.

The move from Deadly Connections to Wundirra signals a new chapter grounded in the strength, leadership, and self-determination of Aboriginal women: a commitment to culturally safe spaces where women can access support, build confidence, strengthen their leadership, and realise their full potential, unapologetically and with pride.

We acknowledge and pay respects to the First Nations People of Australia, the land in which we live and work. We recognise the strength, resilience and capacity of Aboriginal people and pay respects to Elders past and present.