Ashton Wood – The Phone in Your Drawer Could Save a Life (Part 2)
Years ago, Ashton Wood and I sat on a park bench by the Noosa River to talk about a small idea that was just getting off the ground. This episode picks up where that conversation left off.
It started with a police officer who needed phones and two old handsets sitting in Ashton’s drawer. Six years later, DV Safe Phone has handed more than 23,000 free, refurbished mobiles to domestic violence survivors through 687 police stations, safe houses, hospitals and support agencies across Australia.
In this follow-up episode, I catch up with Ashton at the charity’s Sunshine Coast headquarters to talk abouttechnology-facilitated abuse, why a safe phone can mean the difference between staying trapped and getting out, and how a former telco career shaped a charity that never sells a donated device. Ashton shares how nearly 1,000 phones arrive every week, why 22 million unused phones sit in Australian drawers, and the push to reach 50,000 DV survivors by 2030.
