Three pillars of the community have been recognised for their life-time's achievements, with Jan Roberts, Lyn Quigley, and Brian Quigley taking out the 2020 peace awards.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Quigley couple were given the Rotary's community service award for their decades-long battle to build a housing complex for young adults with intellectual disabilities.
Almost 20 years of dedication will soon pay off, with the Kooriginal Abbeyfield House set to open on the corner of Paull Street and Stanley Street in the coming months.
It has been a long, hard-fought battle for Mrs Quigley, who first started writing letters to politicians back in the year 2000 to garner their support.
It has also been a highly personal cause for the Quigleys, who have two sons with intellectual disabilities but no community to call home.
"We weren't able to ever find them a suitable place to live; they always met with so many challenges and so many negative attitudes," Mrs Quigley said.
"We saw the need, and we wanted to make sure that our family and other families in the community were cared for."
Their first taste of victory came in 2013 when the NSW Government agreed to fund their project to the tune of $1.5 million.
Then, after winning over the support from Wagga's different Rotary clubs they managed to bump the total budget up to $2 million.
Now all that remains are last bits of paperwork and "tidying up all the loose ends", before ten new residents can move into their new home.
"We hope they have a fantastic housing choice and have lots of social interactions with their other residents and be very engaged with the Kooringal community and wider Wagga community," Mrs Quigley said.
The house will include an on-site coordinator who will make sure the residents have their needs taken care of and that they get the best quality of life possible.
Another person who was recognised for their long-standing efforts was Jan Roberts, who won the Wagga City Council Peace Award.
Ms Roberts set up the Wagga Women's Health Centre over 40 years ago and has been a stalwart activist for women's rights ever since.
"People find it hard to believe, but 40 years ago in Wagga there were virtually no services for women at all," Ms Roberts said.
"The concept of women needing refuge from violent relationships was entirely new, and there was no community housing for women or children suffering sexual abuse. These were things society didn't talk about."
Ms Roberts soon set about changing that, and with the help of a small team of volunteers they set up Wagga's first women's centre.
Wagga has come a long way since then, but Ms Roberts said her work is far from over.
"There is still a need for many people to blame the victim," she said, pointing to the media response to the gruesome murder of Hannah Clarke.
"We need to change the dialogue between men and women - we're actually talking about the imbalance of power, and the only way forward for our society is for men to welcome the involvement of women, not just put up with it."
Feminism is not the only cause Ms Roberts has championed; ever since she was a little girl she's been a card-carrying "greenie", an identity she carries on to this day at the age of 70.
"My dad was a wildlife ranger, so I grew up knowing how crucial the birds and the bees and the trees were to us," she said.
"Unfortunately we see the planet as a place to be plundered, and that's led to the situation today where people fight over water, land, everything. Instead we need to see ourselves as living on a common planet."