Every year, as December rolls in and inboxes fill with end-of-year reminders, Australian businesses quietly join a familiar ritual: ordering gifts. Hampers, chocolates, branded notebooks, and of course, the perennial favourites, a bottle of wine with a company’s name printed neatly on a sticker.
But for Share the Dignity founder Rochelle Courtenay, the entire gift giving charade misses the moment, and the mark.
“I don’t need another bottle of wine with your name on the front of it,” Courtenay told Mediaweek. “I want you to care about a person. That is the most amazing gift”.
Instead of giving clients or employees something destined for the cupboard, Courtenay wants businesses to put their money where their proverbial care factor is and donate an It’s in the Bag essentials pack on someone’s behalf.
Items like shampoo, deodorant, period products, toothbrushes: “The things that mean the world to a woman or girl who has nothing at all,” Courtenay said.
Share the Dignity founder Rochelle Courtenay
And that’s the gap she wants to close.
It’s all part of the charity’s new campaign, A Bloody Good Christmas, which is built on a simple, slightly provocative idea: maybe this year, we don’t need another anything with someone’s name on it.
Maybe we give something that doesn’t end up forgotten in a cupboard – but instead lands in the hands of a woman who’s fled violence, or a girl who hasn’t been able to afford period products in months.
Courtenay wants to replace clutter with connection.
A Bloody Good Christmas lets businesses donate an It’s in the Bag care pack – essential items like shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, soap and period products – and gift it on behalf of clients, partners or staff.
The entire process is digital: a few clicks, a customised e-card, no logistics, no packing, no couriers.
But the emotion sits well beyond the ease of the transaction.
Courtenay says workplaces often talk a big game when it comes to ESG. Yet the “S”, the social part, rarely gets the moment it deserves.
This, she tells Mediaweek, is one way to bring it to life.
Courtenay recalls a corporate packing session years ago. “One of the managers was talking about how he remembers his mum and them fleeing to a shelter. They’d had people come in, they’d had White Ribbon days – but he’d never opened up about that.”
“Having these kinds of ways to bring it into your business allows more connection as well, I think,” she said.
A gesture that lands where it matters
Courtenay’s own understanding of privilege came from an ordinary moment.
Growing up in housing commission, with parents working two jobs, her family had food and some essentials – just enough to get by. She never thought of herself as privileged until she opened a bathroom cupboard one day and realised she simply had more than many women ever receive.
“That’s when realised I had too many things in my bathroom cupboard – which is how It’s in the Bag started,” she revealed.
And now, she argues, privilege isn’t about guilt – it’s about use.
“Privilege for good, for me, means that if you’ve got five bucks to give somebody else – a pad or a tampon – or if you’ve got forty bucks to donate an essentials bag to somebody, that’s how you use your privilege for good.”
“I can go without two wines on a Friday night. That’s my privilege for good,” she said.
Closing the widening gap
Last year, Share the Dignity distributed more than 111,000 bags – 205,000 were requested by more than 3,500 charity partners nationwide.
With cost-of-living pressure pushing more women into crisis, Courtenay says the need is scaling faster than donations. That’s why a virtual, business-focused campaign matters.
“It’s more than just the stuff, she said. “It’s the fact they feel valued, that they feel hope, that they feel important. You can’t buy that.”
Not another wine bottle
At the heart of this campaign sits a quiet challenge to corporate Australia: What if your Christmas gift could genuinely change someone’s life?
Courtenay doesn’t want another bottle of wine. She wants women and girls across the country to feel remembered and to feel human on a day that can be unbearably lonely.
“If somebody gave that to me as a gift, my heart would feel good,” she said.
And that’s the story she wants businesses to tell this Christmas. Not with labels or logos, but with dignity.