All in a days work…

Three months ago Sam wrote a post about his experience of being the new guy at Curative. He wrote about how his first weeks were a heady mix of myriad tasks. He wrote about how July was a month of disruption and that things seemed to be moving incredibly fast as Curative grew. But he wrote all of this with a tone which implied that it was only temporary – that there was some base-line of normality to which Curative would eventually settle.

This idea has persisted; yarns of a world where things don’t change quite so fast were spun to me in my first few weeks as well. “It’s not normally like this…”, I would be assured. “Wow, this week is crazy”, would be exclaimed. “Amazing events like this don’t always happen”, I would be emphatically reminded. But, having been here for over a month now, I’ve come to realise something: it *is* always like this; life at Curative goes at a million miles an hour - and that’s exactly the way I like it.

This month’s list of things to keep us on our toes has included launching some very exciting new projects. It’s always a delightful experience finally opening the gates on a piece of work that we have poured so much time and love into.

One such project that deserves special mention is The Harbour: Everyone here says that it seems so long ago that the wonderful people at SAFE, Help and RPE asked us to produce their incredible new online resource.

The Harbour is a platform for people to access information and support about harmful sexual behaviour, addressing a really important need within this area. The material we needed to tackle covered some pretty heavy stuff, especially when it came to collating contributions from both those who have been harmed, as well as those who have caused harm - there were certainly times when this content weighed heavy on our minds. That said, we are already starting to hear some really rewarding feedback about how affected  users have been by reading these contributions. 

And so now, all of a sudden, it’s complete & launched. For me, The Harbour has been one of the first projects I’ve seen fully-launched at Curative, and it’s taught me a lot about the transient nature of our working process: about the necessary level of connection we have with our projects and their subject-matter, while knowing that eventually we will have to let go and set it free at some stage in the future. 

The Harbour’s  release came right off the back of an extremely full-on period for the Curative team, a time when a whole bunch of projects were coming to a head at exactly the same time. As this particularly busy period approached, anticipation rose to the point where the phrase ‘hell-week’ started being bandied about. But we were determined not to let this week get on top of us; we are the masters of our own time, and so we collectively renamed hell-week ‘HELL-YEAH Week!’.

One of the largest (and definitely the most delicious) components of hell-yeah week was our Social Innovation dinner event, The Feast, which Curative hosted in collaboration with the Sustainable Business Network and our friends at Innovate Change. The Feast is an opportunity to get some of Auckland’s greatest social innovation minds in a room, feed them wine and delicious food from POPdining, and then let them loose on a challenge. This year’s dinner was based around identifying interesting and innovative solutions that could provide safe, warm and sustainable housing for the Auckland’s growing population. Lots of great connections were forged during many interesting conversations. Check out the photos of the evening here…

But even as the final morsels of dessert were devoured, the Curative team were all conscious that ‘Hell Yeah’ week was still in full-swing; we managed to race home for a few short hours of sleep before being up again to host CreativeMornings six hours later. Another global collaboration, which this month saw 50+ chapters from around the world host a talk which followed the theme of ‘Play’ proudly set by our own little team. 

All the while, I still had a sense that everyone expected things to slow down soon, back to some level of supposed normality…

‘Hell-Yeah’ week ended with a special treat for Eddy & I (Double-Eddies!) when we were asked to speak at the Tall Poppy conference that was expertly brought together by Brook, Elliot, and the awesome team at ZEAL. Tall Poppy pulled together some of the most interesting change-makers in the country to share the ways in which their work is having positive impact on the lives of young people. While the day was choc-full of incredible speakers, some stand-outs for us included hearing NZ’s principle youth court judge Andrew Becroft talking about progressive new approaches to youth justice. Another memorable moment was hearing Chris Clark, CEO of World Vision, talking about the importance of adaptability within the social sector - which certainly resonated with us during this fast-paced week. From my perspective, it was fantastic to get a chance to meet some of the best movers and shakers in the sector up here, and to reconnect with some I’d met before. 

As the sun set on Tall Poppy, so too did it set on ‘Hell-Yeah’ week. Eddy and I both (respectively) went home to our first home cooked meals, our first early night, our first chance to not be out the door before 6am, in a week. Team Curative slept well that weekend, no doubt. Perhaps they did so under the illusion that it wouldn’t be the same in the coming week; that this was going to be the settling week, the promised-land where time comes in healthy portions, and nothing needs to get done until tomorrow. 

Maybe this is the way we need to think in order to stay sane, but as for me, the new guy, I see through it; I’m quickly coming to the realisation that the pace never drops in a place like this, there is always more to do, more exciting projects and ideas, and more wonderful organisations to help. But then again, I think the thing we all share in common here is that none of us would have it any other way. 

Have a great November, everybody.

Edward & Kaan 

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. 

• 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.