“WE’RE lucky enough that footy has been able to give us a platform. For a lot of players, it’s just about how you use that platform and how you want to use it.”

Jess Hosking is well aware of the position afforded to her as a professional athlete and, it’s fair to say, she is making the most of her platform to make her voice heard.

Hosking’s involvement with charities is well known, with the 24-year-old involved with the likes of CleftPals Victoria, Interplast and Red Dust as well as having previously been an ambassador for the Carlton Respects program.

The talented defender’s endless work has not gone unnoticed, nominated for the 2019 Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award — an award which is presented to the player who has best demonstrated the values of late Melbourne Football Club President and Brownlow Medallist Jim Stynes.

While the nomination was “something special” for Hosking, she knows that the charitable work she continues to do holds a greater purpose.

"I never really thought that I would be nominated for it. It's something I've always kind of looked at growing up and I was in admiration of all the people who were nominated,” Hosking said following her nomination in 2019.

"I don't really do any of the things that I do to get the accolades. My initial reaction was that I was stoked at the chance that these charities would be able to get promotion."

Jess’ work, in particular, with CleftPals and Interplast stems from her own experiences as a “cleft baby”.

Born with unilateral cleft lip and palate, Hosking spoke honestly on the Behind the Game Changers podcast about the time she had spent as a child in surgery and how it provided her with the motivation to get involved with the two charities, which specifically deal with providing support to children and their families born with this condition.

Her work with charity Interplast,  a not-for-profit organisation working to empower our neighbours through surgical treatment for patients and training for local medical staff, saw Hosking travel to Samoa to work as part of the surgical team in a local hospital.

In what was an eye-opening experience, Hosking gained a greater appreciation of the privileges often taken for granted here in Australia and felt the heartbreaking decisions some locals were faced with when it came to their own health.

“We went along and the MRI machine was broken, so for all of the surgeries that they performed, they couldn’t do any scans for the surgeries,” she said.

“They were literally going in blind to some of these surgeries not knowing what was going to happen.

“There was a mum who came in who had six kids. It turned out she had breast cancer, but it was too far along and our machines that were at the hospital couldn’t tell or diagnose what she had properly.

“The doctors said, ‘we can treat you if come over to Australia’.

“She couldn’t come because no-one could look after her six kids.

“Unfortunately, she had the choice of leaving her kids - which she couldn’t - or staying with her kids for the time that she had left. That was her choice.”

Rather than be defeated, however, the strong-willed and dedicated Hosking took this as further inspiration to do more.

With twin sister Sarah as a partner, the two last year completed the New York Marathon to raise important funds for Interplast – finishing the 42km run in just over four hours.

There is no doubt that the work being done by Hosking will change lives, and it is something that she encourages other athletes to look to be involved in and use their voice to positively impact those around them.

“For a lot of players it’s just about how you use that platform and how you want to use it,” she said.

“I guess I found myself in a position where I had a little bit more of a voice and I was able to share some stuff with people.”