Annual Grant

Jessie Street often used her own money to provide seeding grants to active organisations. The Trust is carrying on that tradition. The Jessie Street Trust provides a seeding grant each year to organisations which work in one of the areas of Jessie’s interests, which included: women’s rights, Aboriginal rights, peace and disarmament and the elimination of all forms of discrimination.

Grant recipients have included activists in indigenous and migrant communities, peace and anti-discrimination projects, and a group of East Timorese women who, after years of hiding in the mountains with their families, were determined to make an economic future for themselves. They used our grant to start a roadside restaurant with their existing skills.

Previous Grant Recipients:

​​2025 Reset Tech Australia

2024 Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre

2023 Yes 23 – The Voice to Parliament Referendum

2022 the Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS) to support their Afghanistan Crisis Response Program assisting Afghani refugees seeking protection in Australia

2019 MAPW (Australia) to fund a campaign titled “Quit Nukes”.

2018 International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, Nobel Peace Prize Ride

2017 Ngroo Education and Children’s Ground. Check out the fabulous work of Children’s Ground here.

2016 Refugee Council of Australia

2015 Holroyd High School

2014 RECOGNISE THIS

2013 Women’s Legal Services NSW

2012 Women in Prison Advocacy Network (WIPAN)

2011 See Hear Speak anti sexual harassment campaign

2010 SISTER2sister mentoring program for disadvantaged young women

2009 Murri Sisters Assoc. Inc.

2008 UTS Anti-Slavery Project

2007 Indigenous Youth Leadership Program

2006 Reconciliation Australia, for research on key activists in the 1967 Referendum

2005 Gnujurung Festival Youth Leadership Project, Beagle Bay, WA, for an arts festival

2004 Mudgingal Aboriginal Women’s Centre, Redfern for an education program for young women

2003 Contribution to new edition of Jessie Street’s autobiography, Truth or Repose 
Mahboba’s Promise to assist widows and orphans in Afghanistan

2002 Migrant women’s health project in WA

2001 Far North Queensland Refugee Women and Children Self-help Network

2000 The Organisation of East Timorese Women in Manatuto to support a sustainable economic development project

1999 The Amos Aboriginal Corporation at Mount Margaret, WA, for an oral history project with older women

1998 Andrea Baker, Fiona Sewell and Marion Mc Gregor of Community Radio 3CR for a radio series Women and the Republic

1997 Bundi Nyalru, Aboriginal Modelling Project, through the Geraldton Streetwork Aboriginal Corporation, which provides training courses for young women.

1996 Kate Murray, for assistance in distributing The Peacemakers – the history of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 
Helen Barnacle, for a women’s theatre workshop in Fairlea Women’s Prison

1995 Rebecca McLean, for assistance in the completion of a documentary Save Our Sons which records work of the next generation of peacemakers

1994 The Jessie Street Library Building Fund

1993 Deborah Brooks for Australian participation in the World Court Project on the illegality of nuclear weapons 
Eva Cox for a project called ‘House workshop’

1992 Edna Ryan, towards legal counsel and representation at the National Wage Case hearing on enterprise bargaining on behalf of women

1991 Wendy Brady, Queensland University of Technology, for a management skills development project for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women