Constant Ch-ch-ch-changes…

With all the changes and upheaval that Team Curative have undergone over the last couple of months, David Bowie would have been telling us to ‘turn and face the strain’. And we’d be fibbing if we didn’t concede that there has been extra pressure on us all. But, for the most part, it’s been an amazingly unifying and uplifting time as we’ve moved into our new home, and grown our family.

Moving into the new Curative HQ studio was a pretty natural change. After 18 months of co-working, first at The Kitchen, then a brief stint at Movers & Shakers, it was definitely time for us to cultivate the Curative culture, and find our own space.

So on Friday 30 August, we once again loaded up the cars with all of our belongings, and this time trekked off to our new and permanent home at the foot of Mt Eden.

The chaos and elation of unloading boxes, unwrapping all of our new goodies, and placing all of our furniture in just the right spot, was all consuming on moving day. But as we arrived for our first working day, and settled in our new desks, it finally dawned on us - we were all alone.

While we’re now sharing our new spot with with our pals at Innovate Change and Core Education, for the first few days, it was just us. It was a strange realisation. And we felt a bit lonely. Having cohabited with dozens of others in our previous homes, we found ourselves missing the unpredictable comings and goings that we’d become so accustomed to.

Turns out, we are people people. We thrive when we’re surrounded by others. We like noise. We like the energy of new ideas, and interesting conversations. But, we also really, really need some quiet and some focus to be able to get things done and invest in supporting our own team.

Thankfully, we have the best of both worlds now that we have a few extra bodies from Innovate Change and Core Education sharing the space with us. It’s a pretty harmonious collective, each with different organisational strengths, but with similar values.

• We all value people first. We like to learn something new each day.
• We believe in growing young people.
• And we like to have fun while we change the world.

It was the most humbling moment as the Karanga echoed to call us into our new home. As Core-Education’s Kaumatua walked us through our sun-kissed space, blessing each nook. As we shared a cup of tea and our hopes for our new shared office.

Yes, there were a few tears. Happy little droplets trickled down my cheeks as I reflected on on where we’d been to get to this place - our own studio. Months of Jade and I working from our homes when we first began, to our team bringing in their own equipment at The Kitchen, to us all dossing in an unheated office at Movers & Shakers through the coldest months of winter. We were finally here. In our new spot. With hot water, a dishwasher and our own things. It was pretty special. And I can promise that we won’t be taking our new home for granted. We’ve worked hard to get here. And we’re loving furnishing and filling it with all the comforts, fittings and fixtures that make it us.

And it’s not just new things in our new home. We have a new person too!

We were pretty overwhelmed with the response to the ad that we put out in August, which started our hunt for some awesome person to join the team. For some reason, we had thought that we would know everyone who would apply. But we were flooded with interesting, creative, caring individuals, who found us in lots of different ways.

And after an interview process, which of course involved preparing a meal with our team, we’re thrilled to welcome ‘the other Eddy’ into our little family. One week new, and he’s already fitting right in. Alternate suggestions for what we should call him around the office are appreciated. Jade suggested we just call him ‘Sue’ - but that doesn’t seem to be catching on. So Edward it is for now.

Someone really wise once said that ‘change is the only constant in your life’. A new person, and a new place were our big changes this month. But the change we’re most excited to be part of is taking the Complex Care Group online for the first time.

This group of amazing parents and families of young people with highly complex needs have been supporting one-another without any digital presence, aside from email, for the last 10 years.

So we are thrilled to have worked with them to produce an online resource that will help support, connect and give a voice to this incredible group, who are so selfless and tireless with the energy and love that they give. It was our absolute pleasure to launch the site together, just today, and we hope that it makes their lives just a little bit easier, and helps others understand just how much they do.

They say that change is as good as a holiday. But we think it’s even better. Change is full of energy, invigoration and a revived sense of direction. If things aren’t changing, then you’re just standing still. And we’re not the sort of people who like to stand still for very long.

Jade & Eddy.

P.S - If you’d like to hear from and hang out with some other interesting change-makers, you can register to join us at the Tall Poppy event, which is being hosted by ZEAL on Saturday 19 October 2013.

P.S.S - And, if you love a bit of exercise to start your day, we have a wonderful Yoga teacher that comes into Curative HQ to take a class every Thursday morning, 7:30am ($12 per class) - Tweet @Curative_NZ  if you’re keen to join us for #Yoga!

“When I was one, I had just begun”
- AA Milne

The playful words of AA Milne that enchanted us all as a children, today make sense. As Curative celebrates our first year of business, it rings true that ‘we have just begun’, and we’re full of optimism and excitement about what lies ahead.

The nice thing about entering year two, is that while we’re still fresh and new, we now know that we can ‘do this’. We’re also forearmed with the lessons that our first year has taught us, and we can use this new found knowledge and experience to further shape and mould our business and our lives.

We (especially Jade) read a lot of blogs, and get a lot of inspiration from all of the learnings that others share.  Our original intention was to post all of our learnings along the way; but we got so caught up in the doing and the learning, that we ran out of time to share everything. So, our birthday gift to you, is a handful of the most important things that year one has taught us.

Love.

If you’ve been to any of our presentations or workshops (or if you know us at all), you’ll know we always start and finish by saying: ”Do what you love, Love what you do.“

We don’t say this lightly. We know that the lines tend to blur between personal & professional lives, and we’ve given up on the notion of ‘work-life balance’ in favour of ‘work-life integration’.

We spend so much time working, so it’s important to us that the environment we’re in, the work we’re doing, and the people we’re doing it with, can all be loved by us. It sounds a bit smooshy, fluffy, hippy-esque even, but the more positive energy and care that we can genuinely give something, the better the outcome, the stronger the relationship, and the more fun we have doing it.

It’s simple really, it’s much easier to get out of bed in the morning to do work that we believe in, with people we enjoy spending time with.

At our latest CreativeMornings, which followed the global theme of happiness, Friday & Andy from Running with Scissors shared the same sentiments, even going so far as saying that happiness was good for the bottom line. So, our version is that love is good for the triple-bottom line; people, planet and profit.  

Fail.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to produce consistently considered, clever, high-quality pieces of work. We like to push boundaries, to think outside the box, to embrace every creative cliche you can imagine. This pressure has the potential to be crippling; but this year we’ve learnt not to go so hard on ourselves, that we are our own worst critics, and potential failures are just an opportunity to improve.

We’ve learnt that it’s okay to get things wrong, in fact nothing will ever be perfect. We’ve learnt that sometimes it’s the things that don’t go quite to plan that teach you the greatest lessons. That it’s better to do something, and then change it, than to do nothing at all.

It was Einstein who said something along the lines of ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity’. And we don’t want to be insane. So, we always look at how we could change a process, how we could make the colours brighter, how we could organise the room in a more logical way; anything that will smooth out the kinks for the next time we tackle a similar challenge.

Celebrate.

Whether you win or lose, it’s important to celebrate the effort. A slice of cake, a glass of wine, an indulgent afternoon of pampering, a high-five, a dance-off or simply some tech-free time, we think it’s important to reward hard work, to acknowledge the people in your life, and to share the thrill and relief of completion, achievement or a personal win.  

Everyday should include a little celebration, or a little reward. Light the candles today, wear your best dress, use the good china. Every day is special.

Repeat.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far. To new friends and old, to our families, our clients, co-conspirators and collaborators, and especially to Adam and Gareth; don’t underestimate how much strength, courage and energy your belief in us gives us.

• PHOTOS: Check out the rest of the Curative’s Birthday Party photos »
• ARTICLE: Read more about our first year on The Fetch »

How much change can you make for $2.25?

A lot more when you pool your resources and work together.

How big a part does food play in your life? It’s not something we think about too much, since we have such easy access to it. But last week we came to appreciate how much food is built into our daily schedules.

Catch up with a friend? Grab lunch at a local cafe. Client meeting? Coffee and Tea please. Struggling to get through the mid-afternoon doldrums? Sugary snack to jumpstart the brain. Need to wind down after work? Glass of red.

Take those away and life start to get a little less fun. Then drastically cut your daily food intake and your ability to function becomes severely impaired. How do we know this? Well we, alongside 1400 other Kiwis, were Living Below the Line for a week, in an effort to raise awareness and funds around the global problem of extreme poverty.

Our involvement with the campaign started back in June when we helped Will and Patrick from the Global Poverty Project launch this years New Zealand Live Below the Line challenge; a campaign that has managed to get eight of the major aid organisations within New Zealand to collaborate, no mean feat.

After being immersed in the cause at the time of launch, we knew that we had to take the challenge ourselves, and live below the international extreme poverty line, on just $2.25 a day, for 5 days.  

Living on such a small amount is all but inconceivable for those of us lucky enough to be born in the Western world, but for 1.4 Billion people around the world it’s their reality. They have to survive on that tiny budget, using it to pay for not just their food but also clean water, healthcare, education, shelter, everything! The aim of the campaign is to bring an end to this extreme poverty within a generation, to help those most in need to break out of the cycle that they’ve been born into.

Now lets be clear, this challenge in no way comes close to replicating the realities of those living below the poverty line, but it did give us valuable insight into some of the day to day struggles.  

We knew it was going to be hard; that it was very likely that we would be hungry, grumpy, and sluggish. But we also knew as a team of three we could pool our resources, and lean on each for support (something that proved invaluable as we made our way through the week).

We created a very detailed daily plan for our meals, and tried to make sure that each meal was as filling as possible. We were never in danger of starving, but our struggles would be mental. Eating had to become more about survival, rather than enjoyment. Our meals, while in no way unpleasant, wouldn’t be particularly inspiring, but they would give us what we needed. We would have to deal with the fact we couldn’t just grab a snack when our stomachs rumbled, or sip a cup of tea for refreshment.

But we had no idea of the toll it would take on our workloads. The smaller portions paired with lack of sugar, coffee, and tea clouded our thoughts, slowed our responses and gave us splitting headaches.

Food also took up a whole lot more headspace than we expected. With such a strict budget, we couldn’t just grab something as we ran out the door. We had to make time to prepare and eat each of the three meals everyday. And much of the week was occupied just thinking about food too. Despite realising early on, talking about things we couldn’t have was tortuous, we couldn’t seem to help ourselves, and many of our conversations centered around that which we could not have.

As much as we complained last week, we were always brought back to reality by the fact that this is just a small taste of what life is like for a large portion of the worlds population. It’s a sobering perspective.

We finished the week with a renewed appreciation for the amount of choice we have when it comes to food, the ease of access to it, and how much we depend on it to help us get through the day.

And the challenge has proven to us once again how valuable it is to have a supportive network around you, to push you forward, help you out and bolster your efforts. Last week 1400 New Zealanders came together to let people know extreme poverty is something we can bring to an end, raising over $300,000 while we were at it.

There’s strength in numbers, and by simply working together and sharing resources, seemingly insurmountable challenges can become a lot more manageable, whether it be surviving on a tiny budget, or bringing an end to a global crisis.

The animated video that Curative’s lead crafter Kaan, produced to tell the story of Live Below The Line.

Dear Friends -

Parliament is about to consider the Crown Entities Reform Bill which among other changes abolishes the Charities Act2005 and disestablishes the New Zealand Charities Commission.

The Charities Commission was established as an autonomous crown entity after years of consultation and discussion with the community and charity sector.

Along with managing the register of charitable entities, the Charities Commission was established to promote public trust and confidence in the charitable sector, encourage and promote the effective use of charitable resources and educate and assist charities in relation to matters of good governance and management.

However, under the proposed reform the functions of the Charities Commission would be moved to the Department of Internal Affairs, who have a lesser capacity for understanding, supporting, educating and growing the sector.

The government intends to disestablish the Charities Commission as an autonomous crown entity in the hopes of cost savings; however cost efficiencies are not guaranteed. To regulate the sector will still require staff, office space and equipment and a Chief Executive, all of which come at a cost.

Despite the argument of cost, ultimately the level of engagement and furtherment of the community sector that the Charities Commission has championed is unlikely to continue under Department of Internal Affairs, and years of interaction and progress within the sector will be un-done.

So, what can we do?

The Crown Entities Reform Bill is due to have its second reading in Parliament and be voted on in the week beginning 21 May. This is the last opportunity to save the independent Commission. This means, that the time to act is now.

To show your support for the continued work of the Charities Commission please call or visit your local MP and voice your concerns. If you’re unable to call or visit, please make the time to send a personalised letter to your MP.

To support your appeal, your conversation or letter could outline your community’s need for the Charities Commission, highlight the benefits, education, guidance, events or advocacy that the Commission has provided in the past, and the concerns you have if this support is lessened or removed.

We have one week to make sure that our united voices are heard and that we continue to be supported and furthered as a sector.

Download the Crown Entities Reform Bill here. Part 3 of the Bill covers the disestablishment of the Commission.

Thanks

Eddy & Jade

What is a social enterprise?

Here in New Zealand, this question has been discussed, debated and defined many times over without conclusion. And with so much unresolved talk in this space, many people have started to feel discouraged and disengaged with the notion.

But after listening to Peter Holbrook, CEO of Social Enterprise UK at The Kitchen late last month, it feels like there has been a shift in thinking, after he reminded us that the real meaning of Social Enterprise lies in action rather than definitions.

Peter did define Social Enterprise as: “Organisations whose stated primary objective is to achieve social impact rather than generating profit for owners and shareholders”.

However, in the hour that he spent talking with us, he focused little of his attention on the definition, instead spending most of his time on real examples.

He shared stories. He shared statistics. He shared the reality of creating change; the good, the hard and the inevitable.

He reminded us that Social Enterprise already exists here in New Zealand, and that people running organisations that achieve social impact rather than generating profit, will be just getting on and doing it; not talking about doing it.

He also reminded us that for Social Enterprise to become a recognised sector, with the attention and support that it deserves, we need to quantify the impact, record the success, and get more people right from grass-roots community to goverment and business to understand the importance of Social Enterprise.

But again, we won’t do this by simply talking about it. And we certainly won’t do it by simply defining the sector.  We’ll do it by showing people tangible change.  

This means that we need to find and champion real examples. We need to learn from what already exists both here in New Zealand and abroad. And ultimately we need to create more examples of social impact rather than profit.

And to do this, we need to be truly enterprising. We need to think like businessmen, but with the heart of the community. We need to seek out and create opportunities. And we need to invest profit into the growth of community instead of the growth of individuals.  

So let’s stop talking about the definitions, and let’s start talking about real examples. Let’s talk about the impact. And let’s create change.

Thanks to British Council and the Office of Ethnic Affairs for organising the event, The Kitchen for hosting the presentation, and Peter Holbrook himself for giving us a boost of enthusiasm and showing us that change can happen. 

Why?

It’s such an important question. Yet once we grow out of the naturally (and annoyingly) inquisitive ‘but why’ stage as a child, we often forget to ask ourselves this question as we move through our grown up lives.

As we’ve been piecing together our own website (which is coming very soon!) we stumbled on a mild brain-freeze while articulating what Curative is and how we can help. It wasn’t that we didn’t know the answers to the what and the how, it was just that the sizzle was missing.

Fortunately though, the writers block quickly came unstuck, after we were reminded of this TED talk by Simon Sinek which helped us refocus the energy of our own story into the why?  

It can be such an empowering question. If you really know why you’re doing something, it becomes so much easier to figure out how.    

Work hard, play hard, and don’t forget to keep on learning.

We are definitely not afraid of hard work, and we’re lucky to enjoy the work that we do, which makes it easy to put in the hours to deliver the polish of quality that we strive for.

But we know (and we’re often reminded by friends and family) that all work and no play, isn’t healthy. And while you need some pure play time, you also need to allow room to grow and learn.

So, how do you fit in all of the working, playing and learning to make sure that you’re living a well-balanced life?

It might seem dorky, but we have colour co-ordinated calendars marked with ‘meetings’, ‘working’, ‘playing’ and ‘learning’. It’s a little like putting together a balanced meal, with a good variety of delicious colour on the plate; we’re always trying to make sure that there is a nice mix of colour in our calendar.

And this week, is one of those precariously balanced weeks which is filled to the brim with each or our staples. (Don’t worry Mum Tang and Mum Helm, we’ve factored in time to sleep!)

If you’re in need of some play-time or some mind-food to balance your working week, join us at the Opening celebration of The Kitchen on Thursday night, or get an early start at CreativeMornings on Friday to listen to Cut Collective walk us through their Splore 2012 project.

Who are the people in your neighbourhood?

Working in a co-working space, like The Kitchen, means that there’s always new faces in the building, and new neighbours sitting at the desk next to you. To make the space feel inviting, safe, collaborative and full of energy, we all really need to make the effort to get to know one-another. So, this week Murray instigated a shared lunch where we ate, talked, laughed and before long we were engrossed in discussions about solving the worlds problems. 

Our shared lunch showed us how easy it is to break down the barriers that we put up between ourselves and ‘strangers’. And it also served as a timely reminder that knowing your neighbours matters. 

A couple of years ago now, Rebecca Harrington, a self confessed community advocate, realised that many people today feel they are isolated from their neighbours, yet are unsure what to do about it. So, with the support of a number of agencies, she set about to change this through Neighbours Day; a campaign which aims to get kiwis to go one step further to know their neighbours. 

Driven by the simple belief that great neighbours make great neighbourhoods, the campaign is about turning streets into neighbourhoods, strangers into friends and every street in New Zealand into a fun, friendly, safe and resilient place to live. 

So, when our friends at the Mental Health Foundation & Lifewise asked if we could help share what Neighbours Day means, we were all too happy to help. And in the spirit of neighbourliness we roped in some of our own neighbours and friends, including our wonderful photographer and editor Kaan Hiini, to bring it all to life in this little video.  

A big thank you to all the wonderful people who bought their energy and enthusiasm to this clip. We had so much fun making it, and learned a lot about the importance of a good neighbourhood.  Please feel free to share the video with your friends and family, and get involved with Neighbours Day too!  

The Kitchen may not be a neighbourhood as such, but we share the principals of Neighbours Day, and appreciate the power of getting to know one-another. And, just imagine what could happen, if all of the neighbourhoods in New Zealand start conversations about solving the worlds problems, like we did over our shared lunch!

Thanks to Morna Haist for the photos of our shared lunch! 

We can change the world in a generation.

This weekend reiterated to us that you’re never too young to make a difference.
 
SIFE Waikato, an organisation led by university students with ‘a head for business and a heart for the world,’ invited us to be part of their latest initiative: the iChallenge. “i” for ideas, inspiration and global impact, the iChallenge seeks to empower secondary school students to promote their ideas and vision for a greater world.
 
The day started with Will Watterson, Country Director for the Global Poverty Project sharing his story. He talked about the 1.4 billion people in our  world who live in extreme poverty, and showed that within a generation, we have the capacity to reduce this number to zero. His presentation focused on five questions:

●  What is extreme poverty?

●  Can we do anything about it?

●  What are the barriers to ending extreme poverty?

●  Why should we care?

●  What can we do?

 
Engaged and inspired by Will’s presentation, you could see that the students in the room had their eyes opened to the idea that they had the power to help provoke change.
 
We spent the afternoon harnessing the energy, sharing examples and brainstorming how we could use social media and story telling to get more people involved with the Global Poverty Project.
 
While we looked at the creative ways to get the message out, Guy Ryan, the founder of Inspiring Stories highlighted that we need to be clear in our messaging, before we rush off and try to change the world. If we’re going to get other people involved with a cause, we need to first be clear about why that cause is important to us.
 
If we can explain why it’s important to us, then it doesn’t matter if you’re telling your grandma, the mayor or your peers, they’ll find it hard to look the other way, and will be more compelled to help.
 
No matter how old you are, you can make a difference. And if we’re going to solve problems like extreme poverty in this generation, then we all need to start now.

Thanks to Guy Ryan for the photos! 

• The lovely Amanda Judd shared the story of Lovenotes, and her approach to turning problems on their head; whether it’s curbing consumerism while encouraging recycling, or turning the menial task of sorting paper into a forum for conversation and growth for the young people in her work-force.

• Charlotte Squire from Happyzine talked about the importance of ‘good news stories’ in the media, and how we should celebrate, encourage and support positive action. She also showed how multi-talented she is when she bravely got up and sang with her guitar and tui-bird and had half the audience up and dancing in the middle of the afternoon.

• Rachel Brown who has been fighting the good fight for many years, and now heads up the Sustainable Business Network talked about how she realised that you can’t keep talking to the people who have already ‘got it’ if you really want to influence change. To motivate people and businesses outside of ourselves, you need to find the commonality, and get their peers; the people that ‘speak their language’, on board to help.   

• Philip Patson & Sam Orchard got us all thinking about the need for labels in society today, and led a discussion about whether our passports should indicate male, female or transgender, and the reasons why or why not.

• Whether it’s the difference between tight and loose, or light and dark, Gael Surgenor who spearheaded the ‘It’s not okay’ campaign against domestic violence taught us to embrace and understand opposites; to define a tight direction, but to allow yourself to be free and loose in how you get there.

• ‘If you want to go fast, go at it alone, If you want to go far, go with others’ were the resounding words from Robin Allison from Earthsong Eco-neighbourhood, an innovative urban co-housing development in west Auckland, which proves just what can be done when people work and in this case, live together and share resources.  

• Through a powerful film produced by the Regeneration Trust and Splashroom Media we were introduced to some outstanding teenagers each doing their bit for the environment, and were blown away by the confidence and passion of Luke Carey, who at just 17 has his mind on improving transport systems, and has even drawn up several suggestions for improvement (some of which have even been implemented!).  

• We were heartened by the ‘can-do’ attitude of Geoff Chapple who worked with hundreds of volunteers to establish Te Araroa, a 3000-km trail stretching from Cape Reinga in the North to Bluff in the South, simply ‘because it wasn’t there’. After 10 years of hard work, the trail opened on 03 December 2011. Event organiser Billy summed it up nicely, acknowledging Te Araroa as a physical metaphor for the long journey that most social enterprise and community organisations face.  

• If you had seven people in your family, would you chose to make one to go hungry so that the rest of you could have more fun? That was the question John Stansfield from Oxfam posed to the audience, as he told us that 1 in 7 people on this planet goes hungry every day, even though we collectively have the resources to make sure this doesn’t happen. It’s a powerful question which insights conversation, now the question is how do we turn the conversation into action?

• Seb Stewart from Q Youth was more direct with his questioning, and asked us all to put a stop to using the word ‘gay’ to describe when things aren’t how we’d like them to be. ‘That’s so gay’ needs to be removed from vocabulary, ‘gay’ simply shouldn’t be a derogatory or negative term.

• To wrap up the day, we were given a treat as Courtenay Meredith turned poetry into a moving performance before Lani Evans & Kate Frykberg wrapped up the event with a very fitting conversation about generosity. They gave us each a small gift, which came with three options: a) you could keep it for yourself, b) you could share it with somebody or c) you could give it to someone who would like it more than you.