Monthly Archives: March 2014

Medicinal Purposes

29 Saturday Mar 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Bigotry is being legitimized in my country and the Race Discrimination Act is under attack and change is forecast. Fear and anxiety stocks are growing and returning to the currency of politicians, with their words and actions stoking the fire of division. (Check out Waleed Aly’s article for a background briefing.)

At the heart of this fear is a lack of empathy, an inability to walk in the shoes of another.  I have always felt empathy was best defined in Harper Lee’s classic to Kill a Mockingbird.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

So what is it that gets in the way of empathy being realised?  Fear, anxiety and greed lies at the bottom of the lack of empathy barrel and these slops have the potential to take hold in the soul of a nation and there are plenty of examples in human history where this has taken place. When these times come I look for and long for songs, satire and stories that will be antidotes to this lack of empathy; but even more than that, will take us to new places of empathy.

The wonderful Shaun Micallef’s humour is one of the empathy potions we all can use a dose of and I am grateful for his talent to uncover some of this madness. Being able to laugh has actually been shown to support the growing of trust and social well-being and being able to laugh together (and sing together) lifts us all up – so even if I am in my living room having a laugh-a-long with Shaun, I know I am doing it with others across the nation.

Girl and Camel Duet; Source unknown

Girl and Camel Duet; Source unknown

I have delved deeper into laughter and discovered this week it’s links to breathing, giving us a little rest from our usual breathing and helping us grab air in another way. I know that sometimes my laughs are loud and soft, an occasional snort and maybe accompanied by some percussive hand slapping on my body and even on others.  Laughter is music and has contagion properties and can spread like an infection where the music becomes a chorus. What joy that brings when a room is full of laughter, breathing in new possibilities, emptying egos, and building a common bond.

It empties the air deep in the cavities of our lungs, allowing heart rate and blood pressure to drop, the muscles of fight/ flight exertion to go limp, and our psyche to fall into a calm state.  Born to be Good Dacher Keltner

So Biddy, I want more laughter, more places where people can laugh together and more opportunities for laughter to be used as the antidote to the lack of empathy in our world. I want to laugh more at myself and bring more laughter to the activism. To have fun and use that bond of humour to not only lift our spirits and build our laughter quotient as a nation to bring more peace and justice.  I think it is so well exemplified in the body and spirit of the Dalai Lama who as a man in exile and essentially stateless roams the world as a pilgrim with a smile on his face. I get excited when I see Pope Francis having a laugh and offering a joke as he goes about his mission too.  (The contrast with the long face of Cardinal Pell this week points out the bleeding obvious to me; surely a man in need of my prayers to find empathy as it is clearly eluding him and I am hope for his sake that some of Francis might rub off on him in Rome.) Francis said last year that if the gospel is good news then the priests preaching should look like they are giving good news instead of looking so miserable!

Vitamin Laughter

Vitamin Laughter

I say laughter is good medicine and let’s all take regular doses so we bring more empathy to our world.

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Mothers to Be

21 Friday Mar 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Thirty-four years ago today I became a mother. It was 1am of the equinox before she was born after virtually 24 hours of labour and delivery an emergency caesarean. The babe had gone into shock and the beeps and buzzers were letting us know the heartbeat was stopping and starting. What a trauma, she came out in one beautiful and complete piece relaxed and rested as if there was nothing to worry about at all. A couple of minor challenges faced her immediately, but they didn’t seem to faze her at all and within a week we had started life together away from the prying eyes of doctors and nurses in a bungalow on a busy inner eastern suburban thoroughfare.

All beginnings are marked with some ceremony and this beginning confirmed love, hope, peace and joy. The anticipation of waiting for a child can really stretch your patience, each day beyond the due date seems like an eternity for expectant parents, grandparents, family and friends.  You imagine what the child will be like, and what their future will hold, and what kind of a family you will make together. Before the babe is born you are called an expectant mother – quite appropriate really – you are expecting to become a mother with the birth of the child – and indeed you do once the labour is over and the child delivered is held in your arms. You fall in love so deeply and completely that you have eyes for no-one else.

I was blessed to have four occasions of motherhood and I can only imagine the soul destroying emptiness you would have felt with the loss of your one and only child.

Parenting continues long after the birth. My own mother says she hasn’t finished parenting yet as she heads into her eighth decade. I agree with her.  I am very grateful for the gift of motherhood and having been able to share the parenting with their father all these years.  I still think it takes a village to raise a child and am grateful to many others along the way who have mentored, coached, loved, cajoled, entertained and supported our offspring and continue to do so.

I would like to call on a Blessing for a Mother to Be from your fellow countryman John O’Donohue as I want to join that experience of expectation with the relief you feel not just on the night that your child is born, but on all the other nights when they come home safely and regardless of their journey that day. Whether arriving has been traumatic or without incident, you trust they may easily find their way to be in your arms for real or virtually. Expectantly, you long for the echo of your life to be sounded in theirs and for their own song to ring out as clear as any bell or buzzer that might have been sounded the first time they saw the sun.

Mother to Be

Mother to Be

Nothing could have prepared

Your heart to open like this.

 

From beyond the skies and the stars

This echo arrived inside you

And started to pulse with life;

Each beat a tiny act of growth,

Traversing all our ancient shapes

On its way home to itself.

 

Once it began, you were no longer your own.

A new, more courageous you, offering itself

In a new way to a presence you can sense

But you have not seen or known.

 

It has made you feel alone

In a way you never knew before;

Everyone else sees only from the outside

What you feel and feed

With every fibre of your being.

 

Never have you travelled further inward

Where words and thoughts become half-light

Unable to reach the fund of brightness,

Strengthening inside the night of your womb.

 

Like some primeval moon,

Your soul brightens

The tides of essence

That flow to your child.

 

You know your life has changed forever,

For in all the days and years to come,

Distance will never be able to cut you off

From the one you now carry

For nine months under your heart.

 

May you be blessed with quiet confidence

That destiny will guide you and mind you.

 

May the emerging spirit of your child

Imbibe encouragement and joy

From the continuous music of your heart, so that it can grow with ease.

 

Expectant of wonder and welcome

When its form is fully filled.

And it makes its journey out

To see you and settle at last

Relieved, and glad in your arms.

Anne Geddes

Anne Geddes

Sound and Silence

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Using your voice to say what needs to be said is one of those basic human rights as you knew so well.

At WOMADelaide last weekend I was treated to many a performer, who through the use of their voice, brought their message of justice in a nonviolent way, to our ears.

Listening to Emel Mathiouthi was something special. She was the voice of the revolution in the Arab Spring – the songbird of Tunisia – started with a song in Kurdish and somehow craftily made the transition to Halleljuah by Cohen connecting all the audience in heart and soul.  The drums of PNG appeared in many of the bands and united in songs of justice with Airleke, their lead singer talked about music as his weapon of choice in their freedom fight.  Hearing Billy Bragg, the proclaimed bolshie bard of Britain, sing of union solidarity, how fascism is never fashionable and a call to arms for men to end their sexism, was pure bliss!

democracy

It has been a feature of my life to be part of what I call the ‘democracy gig’ – finding ways to help people have their voices heard, ways for their private pain to be recognised in public policy or to join with others to make what is invisible visible.  With the conservatives in government it is a full time gig with no end of issues draining activists and the list of rights being whittled away for those who have the least is palpable.  The voices of dissent in the music and the arts are needed more than ever.  I am relying on them to sustain me.  (It is no accident that the word voice and vote come from the same root.)  This week I saw Urthboy’s new Don’t Let it Go about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and went to a couple of the Planet Talks at WOMADelaide. I was deeply encouraged to hear from Simon Sheihk, Tim Hollo and Ane Brun about musicans and the music industry generally as role models in the digital age especially with Gen Z.

When you loose your voice in reality (as one of my offspring has done this past month) or metaphorically – it is a deep loss. Not only for you but for those of us who then don’t hear it.  Hearing all the voices is part of coming to understanding about our diversity and sharing what we have in common and celebrating our differences.  The fear of the other, is the bedrock of justice issues and dualism the oxygen. Pluralism is crying out to be embraced and our Earth is straining to be heard.  She is speaking to us with a spluttering and gasping for air, using all the elements at her disposal to help us hear her voice.

I love listening to the late Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue who says that the proof that God loves diversity is that almost everything in creation is actually completely unique – there are no two trees exactly the same, no two people exactly the same, no two rocks exactly the same – and what more proof to we need to know that diversity is God’s will.

The experience of exclusion is a useful training ground for any activist, however it is also  depowering and for those with the least is a descent into hopelessness. It is therefore the responsibility of those of us who have a voice to speak up and be in solidarity with those who can’t speak for themselves. This must not be patronising though and we need to listen carefully to be faithful to their needs and not appropriate.  I also like to put myself to the Bonhoeffer test:

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

I am pretty confident Biddy that you weren’t afraid to speak up for yourself and those that came to you may well have found their voice.  I love the story of you being accused of witchcraft and no one stepping out in the town square prepared to testify against you.  Silence was a powerful noise that day.  It seems to me that you did not discriminate against anyone who came to your door, and by not accepting money for your healing was your way of pointing to a higher power and you were merely the custodian of that gift.  So too it needs to be with us who have a voice, we are the custodians of that gift of being able to speak out and we have people knocking out our doors asking to be heard and welcomed in, it is up to those of us who can speak up to open that door and welcome the other – that is our gift.

Speaking up is part of being on the right side of history as has been shown over and over again – from Wilburforce and the slave trade, Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement and now in my time we have many leaders rising up for human rights and rights for our planet (e.g. Polly Higgins).

Natalia Rak Mural Folk On The Street – Białystok, Poland

May all the artists and singers, songwriters and poets continue to give us the words and sounds so the voices are heard.

Small is Beautiful

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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Dear Biddy,

Small is beautiful and small seems to be the new big.  Back in your day the microscope was beginning to unfold and while you probably weren’t aware of the advances in technology that were on your doorstep, the small world was beginning to reveal itself. (Now that technology is taking another advance.) Your little blue bottle’s contents contained a distillation of the essence of life and love and light – your gift to those seeking healing. The idea that something small makes a difference has been a childhood truth. My Dad used to sing the Disney classic “Just what makes that little old ant” – a tale of an ant conquering a rubber tree plant, instilling in me the mantra that little efforts with tenacity and determination can well make a lasting difference.  I also have loved the parable of the 1,000th snowflake where the weight of one snowflake is nothing less than nothing and yet the 1,000th snowflake breaks the bough.

In my time, the small is taking a new place and shape.  Instead of the big corporate donors, crowdfunding is taking hold as a way to bring ideas to life.  While there are epic tales of rhyming poetry finding their way into print (see Valerie Volk’s Passion Play and Lisa Jacobsen‘s The SunlitZone) are filling spaces on twitter (see Katie Keys). Inspired by that phenomena I am giving myself a Lenten practice of tweeting a poem a day for the 40 days on my journey to Easter (#atinylittlepoem).

It is the small that makes a difference to the whole. There are so many examples of this in everyday situations, and recognition of that moment when the small is mutually recognised and affirmed. On the bus last night, I was offered a seat, another passenger offered to help press the button as I was too far away and yet another offered me a warm and generous smile: a trinity of simplicity to send me on way out of the bustling Friday afternoon.

Bigger is not necessarily better and when I was introduced to Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful in the early ‘80’s I was inspired particularly by the idea that it was all about ‘economics as if people mattered’.  I fully except to see a revival in his work as technology and the environmental movement takes the next step in its evolution.

The village is the small and it is probably one of the reasons I like living in my village of Willunga and in particular love our Farmer’s Market.  I am a little worried that that the recent extension granted to grow the size of the market, might be a death knell.  It is easy to get seduced by growth.  This seduction to the big is better principle needs to be kept at bay in my everyday life too – everyday sustainable practices extend to what I put in my mouth as food, in my head as thoughts, are subject to the same disciplines and truths.

My tiny little poem discipline for Lent will serve me as a daily reminder that small is beautiful, that sustainability is a series of small steps (and not a great big leap) and most importantly creating space for the small is an invitation to distil rather than dilute.

Looking Back to the Future

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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future-calendar-2021Dear Biddy, 

Last week I had this article published and I thought you might be interested in reading my predictions for the future!

Dateline July 1 2021

It’s 2021 and the Non-Government Organisation (NGO) of the Year award has been announced. You are the CEO of that NGO, and as you prepare for your acceptance speech you think back on the decisions, opportunities and accidents that came the way of the agency long before you joined them.

It’s the first anniversary of you working for them, so you want to make sure you thank those who have gone before. After all, it’s someone else’s work that you are harvesting and it has taken seven years to get there.

You make a list of the Top 10 decisions you believe got the agency to where it is to receive the award. There were many decisions to choose from!

Back in 2014 the Board made some momentous decisions:

(1)  All agency food services – a meal service for the homeless and three aged accommodation services – would apply the 100 kilometre rule, providing only foodstuffs that were grown within a 100km radius of your outlets. This built new relationships with households and small providers and created the abundant harvest network; an unintended outcome that linked community gardens, foragers and schools together (and, as an aside, in 2019 won the Stephanie Alexander award, and was voted best TED talk by a community in 2018).

(2)  The agency would take five years to move to renewable energy use. This decision opened up new opportunities and the partnership that had been formed with an employment agency in the post-Holden demise packages meant that affordable energy credits were available to everyone, not just clients of the agency.  The business model took a while to get right and there were some early financial losses, but the underwriting by the Holden package, the commitment of leadership and support from the major power provider made it possible.

(3) Closing down three of the major buildings staff were housed in was a difficult decision, with some staff very reluctant to make the transition to totally mobile platforms. Everyone got a mobile device and space was hired at central hubs in other people’s buildings including the Adelaide Hub. What was cynically seen by some staff as a way to save money soon was understood as a way to build more collaboration, opportunities for co-design and spontaneous networking across disciplines.  This transition was made over time, after the decision in 2017 that no new staff would be allocated a desk or car park or a physical location to work, but rather a list of places to work, including home. The agency was awarded the National Australia Bank teleworking prize for best practice and the human resources lead for this project is now working in California for Google.

(4) Governing arrangements also changed and now getting onto the agency’s board is one of the most sought after seats in town! A couple of innovations included the random selection of two board members every three years from amongst the pool of registered citizens. The randomly selected board members are provided with training, support and mentoring. The voluntary nature of the role has continued, although this remains a hotly contested conversation.

(5)  Participatory budgeting came to the youth program in 2018. A deal was struck amongst all the agencies supporting young people, and the State Government and a state-wide engagement process was developed. Then the funds were allocated as directed by the under 25s.  Everyone had been nervous at first, however the innovations that followed helped confidence grow and the World Bank expert on participatory budgeting gave the concept a big tick in his article in the October 2019 Harvard Business Review. After that, annual internships and training were offered to replicate the model and 100 places are now offered every two years, generating $100,000 income that goes straight back into the program.

(6) Micro-volunteering was pioneered firstly in social media education and information campaigns, but was quickly adapted and adopted in a whole range of programs such as financial planning, personal counselling and domestic violence support.
The idea of having an annual hack-a-thon and prize to develop a community services sector app had been a huge hit. Who would have thought that all the data could be unleashed to generate income as well as inform legislators?

(7)  In 2017, the annual social impact film that replaced the hard copy annual report was so popular that it was submitted as part of the South Australian bid to host the 2020 International Social Good Summit. Needless to say Adelaide won and hosting the event attracted new investors to the Ideas Bank that was established for small innovation grants.  The foundation funds for the Ideas Bank had come from the sale of property and a generous donation from a former Board Member (who was on the Board in the 1950s, and it was a huge surprise) who bequeathed 10% of their estate to the agency.

(8) Recruitment of staff embedded volunteering into the selection criteria in 2016 and this meant that the transition to paid employment ensured shared vision and new pathways for younger volunteers. Exiting staff often returned to the volunteer mentoring pool, mentoring other organisation’s staff.  This idea really took shape when the mother of a past CEO took it on as her personal project – she had a deep interest in how knowledge and skills could be transferred and measured. As a former academic she partnered with one of the international universities domicile in Adelaide and got a five year study underway to measure the health and wellbeing outcomes for both mentor and mentee across the generations.  The agency is a preferred provider and three major national companies (a merchant bank, a bio-tech company and a property developer) have embedded 30 hours a year of mentor volunteering for all staff with the agency. This has brought huge benefits and projects that would never have been able to be undertaken without this extra intellectual capital and networks.

(9) Licensing and then franchising the business model for remote delivery of a range of educational services seemed like a good idea at the time, but the competition in that space had been fierce and so taking the decision in 2017 to get out of that space was a very good one!  The lessons learnt about producing online content were invaluable and enabled the team who had been working on this to be dispersed and influence education providers in their space. The fusion of education and information continued internally and education was no longer seen as independent and discrete from all the other services on offer.

(10)  Building poetry, improvisation and play into every staff encounter had first seemed crazy. Over time staff learnt how to connect in unexpected and fun ways. Coming up with ideas that had first been presented in gibberish were tracked by an Honours Drama student in 2019 and he won the University Medal for his thesis.  The methods released creativity and connectivity and were led by the annual Artist-in-Residence funded from a combination of philanthropic and crowd-funded sources. Some of the techniques were embedded in the Social Good Summit program and were also applied directly in service delivery.

As you come to the end of your reflection you recall the French poet Paul Valery saying: “The trouble of our times is that the future is not what it used to be”, and you are grateful that you didn’t follow; you led and created the future you wanted for the Not for Profit sector.

Future_Sign_Exit

NB: First published as Reflecting Back on the Last Seven Years
Posted: Monday, February 17, 2014 – 18:22 by ProBonoNews