For Marita Aldridge, the job itself is the reward.
The CALD Project Officer with BreastScreen SA knows that the work she does has – quite literally – saved countless lives.
However, she’s happy to admit that receiving the prestigious Outstanding Individual Achievement Award at the 2025 Governor's Multicultural Awards is a huge honour.
Speaking at the recent ceremony on the lawns of Government House, Ms Aldridge said she was driven by knowing that her work had "an impact on helping women to overcome any fears around breast cancer and encouraging them to screen".
"So I’m very humbled and very grateful," she said.
"I’m grateful to BreastScreen for nominating me for this award, very grateful and humbled to be a finalist, and to win it … I’m still shaking!"
Ms Aldridge has dedicated her career to advancing multiculturalism, strengthening social cohesion, and breaking down the cultural, linguistic and systemic barriers that prevent women of diverse backgrounds from accessing breast cancer 
screening.
For the past 18 years she has directly supported more than 170,000 culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women to access screening – an extraordinary achievement benefitting thousands of families and saving thousands of lives through early detection.
"I work to connect with hard-to-reach communities and women where there are barriers to screening," Ms Aldridge said.
"Culturally and linguistically diverse women can have language and cultural barriers to participating in breast cancer screening, so we acknowledge this and put in place a lot of strategies to connect with those communities.
"It’s about understanding communities and their barriers, their beliefs and their understanding of health."
Ms Aldridge said many of the women she works with have grown up in places where breast screening is not part of everyday health care, and in communities where talking about cancer "can be very frightening".
"Reassuring women that breast cancer, when found early, can be treated successfully is really important," she said.
A constant presence at multicultural events and festivals, Marita runs stalls and personally assists women to book appointments.
Ms Aldridge devotes significant personal time building trust with communities and deepening her understanding of cultural and religious practices, as well as delivering metropolitan and regional education sessions to normalise breast screening and address cultural taboos.
She said it was hard to overstate the importance of breast screening.
"We detect between 700 to 750 breast cancers every year, and overall, in SA about 1400 women are diagnosed with breast cancer,” Ms Aldridge said.
"So just over half of those women are found at screening, which is awesome because that means their treatment is going to be less invasive, more successful, they’ll recover quicker and the complications will be minimal."
Ms Aldridge was one of a number of groups and individuals recognised at the 2025 Governor's Multicultural Awards, which recognise individuals and organisations which have made an outstanding contribution to multiculturalism in South Australia.
Click here for a full list of the winners (external site) (external site).
