Starting conversations

It’s a partnership that dates back to the very beginning of the Audi Foundation in 2017, when four eye-catching Q7s emblazoned with the RU OK? logo and message embarked on a mammoth trip around the country to encourage people to ask RU OK?. Since then, the partnership between suicide prevention charity RU OK? and the Audi Foundation has continued to flourish and the now very familiar yellow Q7s are welcomed into cities and rural townships around Australia each year. That simple message of starting a conversation has been life-changing and indeed life saving and has had a tremendous positive impact on so many. Each year the RU OK? team attempts to visit more and more communities in often out-of-the-way locations to share the message and provide resources to encourage people to open up about their lives and struggles.

Providing support and resources and helping people to learn how to ask that simple yet all-important question is at the heart of every visit, be it to a town or a specific business. The Conversation Convoys routinely stop and visit supporters and partners in their journeys, including the Audi Dealer Network which is a staunch supporter.

This year will see three separate Conversation Convoys take to the road, with the first currently visiting the New South Wales southern regions which have been so heavily impacted by natural disasters over the last several years. 

The added pressures visited on communities by bush fires and floods as has been the case in this region, along with the continuing stresses caused by dramatically increased cost of living pressures place people and communities under tremendous pressure and highlight the need to talk all the more.

Plans are well advanced for the second Conversation Convoy which will get underway in June and head to the opposite side of the country. The Audi Q7s are already en route to Western Australia where they will visit some of the country’s more remote locations, taking the RU OK? message to towns in the Kimberley and right up into the top of the Northern Territory and Tiwi Islands. The Conversation Convoys of the past have always made a point of visiting rural and remote communities where support facilities and services are in short supply or non-existent, placing even greater importance on the message of connection and conversation these visits bring.

The third and final Convoy for 2024 will see the yellow Q7s on the road throughout Victoria and Tasmania in September, completing another comprehensive calendar of visits and sharing the all-important message with thousands of Australians.