Aida commenced working with Bravery Trust in early 2020 and has proven herself to be a tireless advocate for veterans of the Australian Defence Forces who find themselves in financial hardship. Beyond providing direct support for the defence community, Aida has dedicated herself to developing the way we operate at Bravery Trust, driving practice development and finding new ways to make a lasting impact in veteran’s lives. As someone who can jump in and make things happen, Aida has built and trained a team of professionals around her and dedicated her time both in and out of work to increasing our connections with the veteran community, promoting our service to the community and forming relationships with a broad range of partners.
Bravery Trust is a national charity which provides financial assistance and financial counselling to ADF veterans who experience financial hardship. Finances are often a difficult stressor for people to speak about and Bravery Trust has evolved over the last 10 years to increasingly remove the stigma about experiencing financial hardship. Aida is based in the Camden area where we had an office prior to moving to a remote work team with members spread across multiple states.
Aida commenced working part time with Bravery Trust as a Beneficiaries Services Officer, taking calls from veterans in hardship, making assessments and providing financial assistance to alleviate their experience of hardship. Despite coming from a wholly different sector, Aida quickly became recognised for her compassionate response which assures people in great distress that things will be okay.
Since her early days, Aida has been a key champion of evolving our services in Bravery Trust and took it on herself to retrain as a financial counsellor. Aida went on to take a team leader role in 2023 when Bravery Trust was undergoing major expansion and has built a team of expert practitioners around her whilst managing a complex caseload of her own. Aida has driven the development of practice initiatives, ranging from new assessment matrices and supporting the co-design of our new IT system to developing trauma-informed conversational skills amongst all our practitioners and building a deep awareness of the challenges of life in the services and how this impacts our clients. Aida has been particularly instrumental in developing the practice around targeting our financial assistance so that every dollar provided has the greatest impact on alleviating hardship in a structured and sustainable way.
Since completing her studies as a financial counsellor Aida has expanded her repertoire to practice this complex field of intervention whilst also maintaining her team leader duties. In a short number of months she has advocated on behalf of veterans with creditors and achieved high praise for her meticulous detail and compassionate engagement in client sessions.
As a leader Aida knows all of her staff on a personal level and empowers them to best use their innate strengths. She has held the team together through times of challenging and complex workload and provides the space and support each member needs to assist our veteran community.
As a tireless builder and advocate, the hardest part of managing Aida is to get her to take time off or finish up at 5pm. She is regularly working back to finish ‘one last thing’ to ensure her team are set up for the next morning or to chase up another connection for community engagement. She has dedicated weekends to engaging with both the ex-serving and active-serving defence community at various community days for serving members and their families in and around Sydney. She runs an impeccably presented information stand which is always stocked with sweets and activities to occupy the kids whilst she talks to parents about financial hardship, removing the stigma around a topic people often find taboo. By maintaining a strong and visible presence for Bravery Trust in and around Sydney and networking with other charities to share skills and resources, there are countless veterans who have reached out for support who may either not have known the support was out there or may not have been able to move through the stigma to reach out for help.
Bravery Trust’s Beneficiarys Services team would not be where it is without Aida’s dedication to the veteran community or the cause of addressing financial hardship. Her team regularly praise her for her support and guiding their practice and I am immensely grateful for her tireless contribution and support in practice and systems design to best target our resources where they can do the most good.
