Rosie Batty launches a new app for young women to help prevent violence.

Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty is launching a new app to educate young women about abusive relationships.

The app will help build young women’s self esteem and shine a light on abusive relationships.

The iMatter app – an initiative of Doncare – aims to “build resilience, to educate about disrespect and intimate partner violence and to promote conversations among young people about healthy relationship behaviour.”

Director of Clinical Services at Doncare, Carmel O’Brien says educating young women about developing healthy relationships is vital to preventing violence against women.

“We really want to encourage people to have conversations about what is healthy and not healthy in a relationship, and stick up for themselves if they think something is not healthy,” she told Mamamia.

Related story: Rosie Batty is Australian of the Year.

iMatter has an existing app, Live Free, which provides information to victims of family and intimate partner violence – but the organisation realised it needed to encourage positive relationships from a much earlier age to make sure that women did not find themselves trapped.

“It really grew from our domestic violence recovery program, where we would often hear older women say, ‘if only I’d known this when I was younger,'” said O’brien

“So we starting speaking to and working with younger women to produce an app that would address this.”

In order to reach young women iMatter realised they needed to occupy a space that was familiar to them – and so an app was created.

The app will encourage young women to create, read and share blogs, videos, quizzes and inspirational quotes in order to foster conversation about healthy relationships.

Read more: Rosie Batty reflects on the loss of her son Luke.

 O’Brien says Rosie Batty was the obvious choice to launch the initiative.

“She is the torch-bearer for this cause. Like a lot of us in the field, she always says we need to listen to other women and we need to have more services (to assist them). She is in such a powerful position to deliver those messages.”

The iMatter app will be launched by Australian of the Year Rosie Batty at Beau Monde Hotel, Doncaster, on February 14. 

Download iMatter here.