Change Makers' Community

Today I speak with Stephanie Wong about the power and joy of communities.

Stephanie shares that her passion to work with and support communities comes from realising that communities are what supported her through difficult times as well as times of joy – rather than our more traditional state structures.

Stephanie has a deep held belief that change happens when people stand together – and that the greater the dream the more people need to be involved. For her there is a sense that communities can disrupt and change the systems which often cause oppression and division within our society.

We also talk a lot about joy and how fundamental it is in creating change. Not only does it sustain us but also allows more creativity and encourages other to join.

@actbuildchange
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephleonard/

This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ruhie Kumar, a climate change campaigner and communications specialist who has worked with civil society groups as well as large campaigning organisations including Greenpeace India.

Ruhie shares her experience of campaigning from getting into unexpectedly through an internship at Greenpeace Australia and how her campaigning has evolved over time with her current emphasis being on networking and organising.

We also touch on the importance of values – and discuss how sometimes there appears to be a lack of empathy within campaigning. Ruhie also shares her experience of applying the values that show up in her campaign communications to her every day life – and how it is daily work to act in line with your own values.

Connect with Ruhie:
instagram: ruhey_climatebabbler
Twitter: @ruhie

Anthea - Journalist, campaigner and author of the Entangled Activist- is today’s wonderful guest.

This is one of those conversations which helps you think differently about activism. Anthea shares with us the importance of looking at the inner life of activism, which means looking at ourselves and how this shows up in how we campaign – which goes against the grain of the dominant white western culture.

Anthea shares with us her experience of being in campaigning roles and noticing that the organisations were actually replicating the system they were trying to change – for instance Human Rights organisations where staff were being treated badly. 

Being curious Anthea spoke with other campaigners and looked to see what was missing – and it was ourselves. As campaigners we don’t often take the time to look at ourselves – our values, desires and behavours that we adopt and replicate because of the culture and systems we have grown up in and operate in.

This leads to the question of what we can do different and that’s where we discussed seeing activism as a daily practice where we consider what we do every day and how we can live our lives in a way that brings about change. Rather than a set of goals we chase we often brings about burn out and feelings that what we do will never be good enough.

This week, Jana, Executive Director of Small Axe, shares with me his belief that to make positive change happen we need mass participation – through movements as well as competitive and meaningful elections.

Jana talks shares his view that in our current democracy, often, decisions are made by a small group of individuals – and how this doesn’t always lead to positive change. His challenge to this is mass participation, where large groups of people are involved in decision making which, while harder, leads to greater accountability and trust as well as better outcomes.

We also talk about motivation and how campaigners can keep going when change seems tough – his answer comes from a line in Frozen!

This week I speak with Nafula Wafula about people power and the courage it takes to speak out.

Nafula is an activist based in Kenya and she shares that her first true understanding of people power was in high school when she staged a protest after seeing a student being beaten. She mobilised other students to walk out the school gate. Nafula, and the others, spoke out despite the fear of consequences – and they were listened to.

Nafula’s passion for speaking out continued – she’s an activist as well as supporting other change makers as part of her work for Change.org.

In our chat we talk about the courage it takes to speak out against power – knowing there could be negative consequences – and how we can support change makers to take this brave step. We talked about the importance of sharing skills, standing in solidarity with others as well as challenging the shrinking space there is for civil society to speak out.

This week I speak with Natasha Adams, an activist with a deep curiosity and interest in social movements.

Tasha shares with us her belief that we need to see deep transformational change which challenges and alters many of our current structural norms. Her inspiration for what this change looks like comes from feminist sci fi and includes a space where there is shift from individualism to collective support and freedom, a place where individuals can follow creative pursuits and we have a meaningful and respectful connection with the natural world.

We discuss the role movements have in creating change – and touch on how they make change slowly, through collaboration and creating power with rather than using power over to create change.

A must listen

Today’s guest is Hannah O’Rourke, Acting Director at Labour Together.   

When talking with Hannah, I appreciated how she acknowledged that there are many effective ways to create. Hannah’s approach is to create spaces where people can come together behind a shared purpose in order to create and implement new ideas and new actions.

Hannah shares that her role is not to lead but to facilitate so that others can create leadership for themselves.  She shares that through her work she often brings together groups of people with very different starting points and potentially have very different views on the world and change. She helps them to identify a shared goal and build relationships based on trust and connection – rather than focusing on what divides and separates them. By doing this the relationships endure and enable different groups to come together to bring about system change 

Today I'm speaking with Kay Tear, from Business Reimagined, who is challenging the development industry - to support people to change their thinking and feeling rather than focusing on their behaviours.

Kay shares how are thoughts are not real and are actually created from our experiences and memories of past situations. And that if we change how we think about something, how we feel about it and how we respond will also change.  By doing this we can be happier, kinder, more compassionate and we can find our own flow more!

This week I have the pleasure of speaking with Neil - a coach, an activist, an outsider and an advocate - and that's only a few of his self-defined labels!
 
 Neil talks with great passion and thoughtfulness around how our culture and systems work in a way to divide us and separate us. And how in the past Neil would have been one of the first out there to protest he now has another approach – which is compassion, connection and acceptance.

Neil describes how his focus – both personally and in his work as a coach – is to first of all focus on self-compassion and then offer it to others. And by connecting differently we can create positive change in the world.

Mike Walker joins me in this fascinating conversation around the importance of strategy and focus in order to help make a campaign winnable. And when there's belief that a campaign is winnable then that creates energy and motivation and has a positive impact for all of those working on the campaign.

We also touch on the lack of diversity there is within those who hold power within our systems and that a key way for us to create positive change is through diversifying power.