Our Watch Stretch RAP
Image Source: Our Watch Commitment to Action Stretch RAP 2025-2028
Client: Our Watch
Our Watch’s Stretch Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) 2025–2028 marks a significant evolution in Our Watch’s reconciliation journey, embedding long-term, organisation-wide commitments to anti-racism, truth-telling, self-determination, and cultural safety.
Our Watch is Australia’s leader in the primary prevention of violence against women working to embed gender equality and prevent violence where Australians live, learn, work and socialise.
Preventing violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children demands an honest reckoning with the legacies of colonisation, racism, and gender inequality.
Murawin walked alongside Our Watch throughout the development of their Stretch RAP, providing culturally informed evaluation, engagement, and advisory support. Our partnership centred on creating the conditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander expertise, leadership, and perspectives to meaningfully shape the RAP’s priorities and actions.
Through rigorous evaluation, culturally safe consultations, and strategic advisory support, Murawin helped ensure the Stretch RAP reflects the aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, partners and communities while challenging non-Indigenous staff to step confidently into their responsibilities as allies.
The Purpose and Power of a Stretch RAP
A Stretch RAP requires an organisation to move beyond foundational reconciliation commitments and embed long-term structural change. For Our Watch, this RAP is deeply tied to their remit as a national body focussed on primary prevention of violence against women.
The Stretch RAP directly responds to these issues by:
- centring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, experiences, cultural expressions, knowledge and governance
- strengthening Indigenous leadership through Board and workforce pathways
- embedding Cultural Knowledge Recognition practices
- elevating Indigenous data sovereignty, ethics and intellectual property
- building organisational confidence in anti-racism and decolonising practices
- supporting national systems through evidence, modelling and public advocacy.
As a non-Indigenous organisation with significant national reach, Our Watch recognises its responsibility to lead by example, acting on the drivers of structural inequity while uplifting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led solutions across the country.
Image Source: Our Watch Commitment to Action Stretch RAP 2025-2028
Murawin’s Role
Evaluating the Innovate RAP
Murawin conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the previous Innovate RAP, analysing quantitative and qualitative data, organisational documentation, and staff insights. This evaluation formed the foundation for the Stretch RAP’s direction, identifying:
- areas of strength in relation to the Reconciliation Australia pillars of Relationships, Respect and Opportunity as well as governance and cultural safety
- opportunities for deeper truth-telling and structural reform
- the need to mitigate cultural load on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff
- the importance of activating non-Indigenous staff as drivers of reconciliation action.
Our mixed-methods approach ensured the recommendations were grounded in evidence and aligned with Reconciliation Australia’s guidance, but also deeply connected to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives.
Culturally Safe Consultations
To shape the new Stretch RAP, Murawin designed and facilitated a culturally safe internal and external engagement process, including:
- focus groups with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff and leaders
- interviews with partner organisations and critical friends
- structured engagements with external First Nations stakeholders.
These discussions were essential in ensuring that the Stretch RAP reflected lived experience, community priorities and diverse cultural wisdom, rather than an organisational lens alone.
Image Source: Our Watch Commitment to Action Stretch RAP 2025-2028
Strategic Advisory Support
Murawin supported Our Watch to translate evaluation findings and consultation insights into a coherent, actionable Stretch RAP framework. This included:
clarifying reconciliation priorities
- strengthening the evidence base
- shaping actions that engage non-Indigenous staff as active participants
- embedding cultural safety, self-determination and Indigenous governance
- ensuring alignment with Changing the picture and the organisation’s broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Strategy.
The result is a Stretch RAP that is ambitious, grounded and deeply aligned to Our Watch’s national role.
Image Source: Australian Mutual Bank Reconciliation Action Plan, 2025
Image Source: Australian Mutual Bank Reconciliation Action Plan, 2025
Walking Side by Side
This work exemplifies Murawin’s belief in walking with clients and supporting organisations to build the confidence, capability and cultural humility required for genuine reconciliation.
For Our Watch, this Stretch RAP reflects a maturation of their reconciliation journey. It acknowledges past challenges, celebrates progress, and sets a clear path for structural change. It also expresses a commitment to ensuring that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, families and communities are centred in the work to prevent violence across Australia.
As Our Watch moves toward implementation, this Stretch RAP will serve as a guide for embedding cultural safety, truth-telling, and self-determination across all parts of the organisation while strengthening their capacity to influence national systems and drive meaningful, long-lasting change.