Speak to the awesome Australian owned business by husband and wife team Brad and Donna Johnson at Zena Sport. 

Together they have been actively involved with the AFL for the past 25 years.  Brad is a former Captain of the Western Bulldogs and club games record holder, having played 364 games. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-johnson-680839195/

Hey Bronti

Love this!

Might be worth reaching out to these guys for some further inspo:

https://www.boobarmour.com.au/pages/aflw-protective-equipment

gender equality in sport certainly has come a long way, but still a way to go!

Good luck! 

I'm wondering if the protection does have to be integrated in the outer layer of the clothing?

Would one size fit all?

Would it make sense to combine it with a sports bra? 

Well done Bronti what an excellent idea!

It sounds like you have lots of people offering to help which is great.

If you would like to look at crowdfunding at some point let us know and we would be happy to help.

With best wishes Jill

Hey Madeline, I have just emailed and now I'm just waiting back for a response. Thank you so much for suggesting them it has been a great help to my design  

Thank you Jen, I emailedhttps://www.boobarmour.com.au/pages/aflw-protective-equipment. And have called them as well. They are perfect for the protective components for what I am after, a fantastic link. Thank you so much for this. Suzie is amazing ‘Gender equality in sport certainly has come a long way, but still a way to go!’ Yep, a long way to go but I am really interested to see how I can break the cycle of low participation due to poorly designed gender bias products. Fingers crossed. for this link. Will let you know how I get on but a huge piece of the puzzle is solved because of your suggestion. Thanks so much Jen 

Thank you David, good questions, only one way to find out and that is through prototyping and testing. THNK looks like an amazing organization, is there a location in Australia that I could get in contact with?

Jill @ ReadyFundGo

Thank you Jill, I had not even thought about funding my design. So thankyou - Ready Fund Go would be a great platform to not only test financial support but would help get my message out there. So yes pleaseI would love to learn more about crowdfunding through REadyFundGo, especially since you are based in Australia and being carbon neutral. I feel this really ties into what I am trying to achieve. If you could maybe so i could connect with you - send your email. 

Deyan Stamatov @ 

Thank you Deyan, yes will need to test materials and techniques to find the best combinations. Do you have anyone in sports textiles or in industrial textiles manufacturing that you know of that would be interested in collaborating with me?

Thank you everyone for your great suggestions and thoughts so far. Please feel free to send my idea out to anyone you think may be able to help protect our athletes and remove built in bias.  Stay tuned for more to come. Bronti

Hi Madeline,

happy to have a chat with you and explore how THNK.innovation could possibly assist you with the product development.

Feel free to shoot me a mail on davidh@THNKinn.com.au

R Hainsworth @

Hi Mrs Hainsworth, great question. Yes I have started to prototype my idea and seeing it come to life is very surreal!! Because my prototyping is with fabric that im not using for my MDP my next steps are to research and order the correct fabrics and materials. Also still trying to work out my final design for my idea which is why ive done multiple prototypes. Thanks Bronti 

Good morning Bronti, hope all is well with you and your family. 

Congratulations on your MDP journey. It has inspired a lot of discussion and postitive impact. We hope that being part of the UpRising initiative has been rewarding and meaningful for you. 

As we wrap up the trial phase of the UpRising initiative and head towards the awards night in November I have a few quick questions.  If you could answer these questoins in a comment below that would be so great. We want to understand how UpRising assisted you so that we can etter help next year's cohort of designers. We are also curious to know if there is anything further you would like to do with your project.

1.      What were two interesting things that you experienced or found as a result of being part of the UpRising? 

2.      How did UpRising help you with your project?

3.      What would you like to do with your project and what would help you get there?

4.      How did seeing other UpRising projects affect your designing and learning experience? 

5.      What would you like to see added to the UpRising initiative to better help next year's students?

One last thing, can you add in a ‘Start to Finish’ photo of your project? If you could stitch an image of your finsihed project next to your early drawing or prototype and update your post with this image that would be great

Congratulations once again and looking forward to seeing you in November. You have done an amazing job and we are very proud of the 2021 cohort. 

See you soon