Transcript:
Emeli:
Hi everyone. I’m em, Paulo
Lucy:
And I’m Lucy Richards.
Emeli:
And we are the founding members of the school for social change. Now, between the two of us, we’ve both been what decades of social change, um, Luce, you wanna tell ‘em a bit about what you’ve been up to?
Lucy:
Yeah. I was lucky enough to be the first employee at Smiling Mind
Emeli:
She’s a big deal.
Lucy:
I help set that up and ran the organisation for a couple of years, I was overseas working in the advocacy circles with the UN and the World Health Organization in health and, um, then at The Resilience Project. Um, but we have two big deals in the room here.
Emeli:
Look, I’ve been more of an activator, a mobiliser. I like grassroots movements. So I was part of the Make Poverty History campaigns and concerts and Zero Seven. Uh, we both met each other at the Reach Foundation, which is a youth organisation. Everything we do, and I have done, joins at the hip, just, you know, being a part of something bigger than ourselves. Mm
Lucy:
Mm. And that’s, that’s why we started the School, to create, facilitate programs and experiences that help you feel connected to something bigger than yourself. So one of the first things that we’re releasing is a series called How to make my vote count, which is knowing that you’re an individual, everyone over 18 in Australia at this upcoming election needs to vote. And one single vote, you know, is connected to all of the other millions of votes out there. So we are individuals connected to the whole.
Emeli:
And initially I was like, wow, first launch will be political. Well actually, everything that we’ve done, our whole lives in social change has been political. You know, we’ve had Treasurers tell us off, uh, for making huge movement and change, um, through to just really challenging people’s notions. Everything is a bit political. And I think this is a great place for us to start is to educate you, um, or to, for all of us to immerse our ourselves in, you know, the information that we need and a process that Luce will take you through that. I think you’ll really love.
Lucy:
Yeah. So it’s really about agency. You talk a lot about agency, and you, you ran a social enterprise for 10 years, helping people uncover their beliefs, their values, their agency, and we’re adopting a lot of that work in our social change framework, which is reflect, listen, act, respond. So that’s the, the four parts that this how to make my vote count series will follow asking you to turn inwards, understand the causes that you care about, then lift your eyes, look out towards understanding what is the “political landscape” (to use a technical term) around you, understanding what are, who are the politicians that are gonna be on your ballot, ballot paper, what do they stand for? And then where’s the alignment between you and them? How do you know when something feels aligned, something feels resonant? So that’s reflect, and
listen, then there’s act, which is the act of voting and what that process will be like, where your votes go, how they get counted and then, respond, which is about pausing and being in relationship with all of the change that just happened because change is inevitable. It’s always happening within us and, around us. And after you vote, all of that change is going to continue on. So how to be in relationship with that? And, what’s next on the social change agenda?
Emeli:
And this framework for me has an emotional intelligence filter over it. It allows you to think reflectively and it’s all through our school, but I kept finding a lot of the time that people didn’t have the space to do this. Wasn’t very human centered design. So we invite you to trial this out, and we know the impact that it can have, cuz we’ve watched it in our own projects
Lucy:
Haven’t we.
Emeli:
Yeah. So it is tried and tested, but we again invite you to check out, this self-guided email process that will be sent to you over four parts and to get you ready for the election to feel informed, to feel empowered and to know that your vote does count and it is impacting the best practice of social change. Thanks for joining us.
Lucy:
Thanks see you there.
