As I wrap up another fantastic trip to Sydney, spending time with wonderful humans, doing the work that means so much to me as the Founder of the Just Be Nice Project, I am sitting in the Virgin Lounge at Sydney Airport feeling compelled to write about an experience I had only a couple of hours ago.
As I was walking to the train station to head to the airport, dragging my bag through Kings Cross, past the iconic water fountain, I noticed a man walking the other way. It's hard not to notice Colin, he is 6'5 for a start, but I wasn't expecting to see him and it took a moment for me to recognise him. In my head I thought "Oh, how strange, there's Colin, didn't expect to see him here." I was dragging my bag, listening to a podcast on my headphones, thinking about getting the train and, to be honest, I was thinking about a scene in the ABC show Rake, where the characters are dancing in the very fountain I was walking past. Only a couple of steps after realising it was, in fact, Colin, I thought to myself, I should stop him and thank him for attending the PROFIS lunch on Friday. Thank him for being a part of an event that supports the Just Be Nice Project." By the time I had finished the thought and got my headphones out we had passed each other and he was off (on his long legs). I missed an opportunity for a thank-you. A very real, sincere and genuine thank-you. All because I was not walking around at that moment, looking for reasons to thank people in general. I was plugged into my phone, I was thinking about my own sweaty back and how I was going to catch a plane and do all the things I needed to do still today. I missed the opportunity and I shouldn't have. I write this because I think it is important to notice when we are too caught up in our own heads that we miss opportunities like that, to thank other people. I often go out of my way to thank people, but what good is that, if at the same time I pass people in the street who deserve a handshake and a "Cheers mate" eye to eye. Regardless, I will keep an eye out for Colin when I am next in the Cross, and needless to say, I won't miss the opportunity twice. It isn't often we publicly admit to ourselves or to others, moments where we could have done better. So now I am doing it. I missed an opportunity and I will continue to do my best to not miss them in the future. To cultivate an attitude and standing that involves looking for even more opportunities to give thanks and encouragement where I see it, at the time of seeing it. I would encourage everyone to do the same. Just Be Nice Project Founder; Josh Reid Jones. Oh, and when I next see Colin, Matt, Andrew, Alexander, Izzy, Luke, Woody, Sally, Vanya or any of the other amazing legends who put in the effort to support the JBNProject this weekend, we'll have a beer on me. Thanks again. When thinking about the point of education, work or even life in general, it is a beneficial exercise to ask yourself "What is the point of all of this?". We believe that the 'point' of it all has been expressed brilliantly already by one Woodrow Wilson;
You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand. -Woodrow Wilson. If you feel like you have forgotten that errand, the errand of enriching the world around you to live more amply, then let us know. We would love to help you realign your efforts to benefit you and the world at large with your talents.
As the fog clears for a few people on this perfect, sunny, first day of spring in Sydney, we would like to thank the team at PROFIS for putting on another epic lunch at Kingsley's CBD this year in support of the Just Be Nice Project.
Big thank you to Matt De Groot and Andrew Swain for their outstanding MC efforts; To our featured guests, UFC top 10 contender Alexander "The Great" Volkanovski, Multi-Code talent, Dual sport Australian Representative and current Wallaby Israel Folau and Australian NFL pioneer Collin Scotts, it was a privilege and a pleasure to have a laugh with you and get further insight into the world of professional sports. Huge thanks to to PROFIS Team - Woody, Shannan, Matt, Jeff, Simon, Rob and Shane and of course Sven, without whom none of this would have been possible! Amazing efforts from our raffle and auction donors for securing such an amazing class of goodies for the punters on the day; Rob Smith - Superfoiler GP Shane Stoddard - ANZ Stadium Ben Parsons - Ministry of Sport Jeff Lemon - Australian Turf Club Adam Cosgrove - South Sydney Rabbitohs ALM & Think Spirits Kingsleys Steak House Simon Docherty and; Sonos All in all, a great day to see out the last day of Winter 2018, we look forward to the next one, so to everyone that came along, ate, drank, bought raffle tickets and auction items. Thank you once again. Josh and the JBN Team.
An important and beautiful lesson to learn and to teach, the concept of sonder is a fantastic antidote to the fetishization of individual stories and personalities. Learning that every random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, is crucial to being able to identify equality of opportunity and practice a practical empathy.
Sonder is a concept that informs all the work that we do at the Just Be Nice Project. We believe it should inform yours. sonder; n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. We know, the Just Be Nice Project isn't for everyone. We don't partner with everyone and not everyone wants to partner with us. Some people and organisations don't want to do things differently, some people and organisations don't believe that it is possible to change the way they have impact to be better for them and for others. Sometimes, getting people to invest now, in a better, more efficient and sustainable future is difficult.
So who is the Just Be Nice Project for? It’s for people who want to do good and don’t know where to start. It’s for people who have worked hard and developed skills and resources but feel disconnected from their abilities and their ability to do good in the world. It’s for people who are dissatisfied with the current paradigm of charity and social help, people who wonder how in a time of prosperity, such as ours, so many people go without. It’s for people who want to improve equality of opportunity for everyone. It’s for people who are good at things. Because people who are good at things can do more good than people who aren’t good at anything…yet. It’s for people who aren’t sure what they are good at and they want to find out. It’s for people who need permission to carry on their journey of being good. Sometimes people feel like they need to stop pursuing excellence because it might be seen as selfish, not knowing that their amazing capacity for impact lies on the other side of their excellence. We are here to encourage excellence and then harness it for the largest benefit. (You don’t begrudge brain surgeons for not working in soup kitchens while they study and learn for 20 years to do a surgery that virtually no one else can do, we encourage them, because at the end of it, we know we’ll need their skills.) It’s for people who don’t simply think that they need to ‘be the change’, but think that they need to ‘be the whole change’. Teaching them that you can be a part of extraordinary impact through making very ordinary positive change… if you do it alongside others. It’s for revolutionaries; for people, organisations and communities that believe that a world where extraordinary positive change is possible, just not by going about it they way we’ve been doing it so far. It’s a match for us and our partners when we can take someone who is interested and make them knowledgeable, engaged and effective. It’s a match for us and our partners when we can take someone who lacks understanding and we can teach them about disadvantage and impact through execution and engagement. It’s a match for us and our partners when people have tried to help before and become frustrated with charitable dogma, inefficiencies, hypocrisy and its - at times - exploitative nature. It’s a match for us and our partners when we find people who believe that equality of opportunity is not just a pipe dream, and that it’s a goal worth working towards.
People in need with cancer.
People in need facing extreme prejudice. People in need of mixed abilities. People in need without employment or a chance of employment. People in need growing up in disadvantage. People in need who are suffering economic distress. People in need with mental health issues. People in need without a place to live. People in need who live overseas. People in need who have inadequate education. People in need who are sick. People in need who fear for their lives. People in need who look after people in need. People in need with empty bellies. People in need who have had a life of privilege and find themselves facing tough times. People in need who have never had the privilege of a resource rich environment. We see people in need. Rather than fight about what cause is the most important, and argue among causes, we believe in creating an eco-system that works to help people in need. It starts with an acknowledgement that people find themselves in need in many different ways, at many different times, for many different reasons. Rather than take the needs of any one community as more important than another, we consider the knowledge of one community about the most effective ways to help that particular community as important. Fighting for causes too often means causes fighting against causes. We are here to fight inefficiency. We are here to fight inequality. We are here to fight for people in need. We are not here to fight inequality with only a spreadsheet and a calculator, but we are also not here to fight inequality with only misguided good intentions and a short-lived peak in emotive interest. We are not here to do things the way that they have been done in the past, because we know that we can do better. We are here to fight alongside people who believe that we can do better. We are here to fight alongside people who are tired of seeing wasted money, time and good intentions. We are here to fight for those in need. We would love you to join that fight.
The notion of the feckless poor is a common narrative among conservatives the world over. The persistent insinuation is that people are poor or 'under-performing' because of a lack of morals. Poor because they don’t work hard. ‘There is opportunity everywhere’ the conservatives say, you simply have to take ownership of your life and pursue it, if you don't, there is no one to blame but yourself.
This week, after a series of circumstances and events that one could not describe as anything but farcical, dishonest and lacking character, Scott Morrison was installed as leader of the Liberal party and Prime Minister of Australia. Among the values espoused in his first press conference, the common call to arms for conservatives of, ‘if you have a go, you’ll get a go’ featured. If you have a go. The reality is, in action, there are plenty of people who ‘have a go’ and don’t ‘get a go’ in this country. The asylum seekers imprisoned on Manus Island, having a go, seeking asylum, as is their right. Is undertaking a treacherous journey to protect your life and that of your family not really having a go? People on the NDIS, leaving about half of the people with disabilities worse off than they were under previous schemes, despite the government spending twice as much. Are these people not having enough of a go? The 2.9 million Australians that live below the poverty line, including the 36% of them who rely on wages as their main source of income, are they not having a go? Should they simply, as Malcolm Turnbull put it “…seek to earn more”? Is the renewable energy sector, with it’s huge strides towards creating cheaper power than fossil fuel sources by 2020 not really having a go? Are students in under-performing schools not having a go? Hamstrung by funding cuts and a teaching profession that treats teachers so poorly that 50% of teachers leave the vocation within a few years of starting, are we sure that these students not having a go? We need to beware of claims of equality that aren’t matched by the relevant social and legislative supports - …in societies which claim to recognize individuals only as equals in right, the educational system and it’s modern nobility only contribute to disguise and legitimise in a more subtle way the arbitrariness of the distribution of power and privileges which perpetuates itself through the socially uneven allocation of school titles and degrees. – Pierre Bourdieu & Jean-Claude Passeron. If we are really serious about giving everyone a go, then we must be serious about improving equality of opportunity for everyone. Not demanding contributions upfront from the most vulnerable, but making it our job to help them get to a place where they are able to contribute. Regardless of our ability or circumstances, we are here to make a contribution, rather than take one; that in order to you to do better, you don't think someone else has to do worse – Scott Morrison The real test of the government will be to see how serious they are about building an environment that does, in fact, foster growth and opportunity for all, and not simply a chosen few. We will be watching closely.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-01/third-of-ndis-participants-feel-no-better-off/9716282
https://www.acoss.org.au/poverty/ https://www.smh.com.au/education/why-up-to-half-of-all-australian-teachers-are-quitting-within-five-years-20170605-gwks31.html https://www.afr.com/news/transcript-of-new-prime-minister-scott-morrisons-first-press-conference-20180824-h14h1a https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewable-energy-cost-effective-fossil-fuels-2020/#36a259674ff2
What does it mean to strive for equality of opportunity? It is certainly not a simple goal, it is not one that is going to be achieved in a short period of time. That's ok, we are here for the long term.
Equality of opportunity is multi-faceted. It is a combination of removing barriers to opportunity and creating new ones in the space left behind. We believe it is the goal most worth pursuing, the overarching goal to which all other attempts at improving the lives of others lead. Equality of opportunity is not about ensuring everyone ends up with the same outcome, but ensuring that we remove the handicaps that people neither deserve nor earn but are often stuck with. Handicaps that my appear at any stage of life, in many different forms. It is our job to merge the worlds of measurement and possibility. In a measurement world you set a goal and work towards it, in a world of possibility you set a context and let life unfold. Imagine a world in which we don’t set expectations to live up to, but possibilities for people to live into. That’s a world that we are striving to build. It’s a world that we can’t build without you.
Arete is a word, originating in ancient Greece describing Virtue or Valour requiring moral, emotional, mental and physical excellence. While it is often associated with bravery, it is more often used in regards to effectiveness.
A man, woman (or organisation) of arete, uses all of their available faculties for maximum effectiveness in the pursuit of excellence. Being the best that they can be, in all areas of a good life. The Just Be Nice Project is committed to working with people to help unlock the potential for good in every corner of their day to day lives. From work, to home to community and social interactions, excellence in understanding, communication, health, wellbeing and effectiveness are fundamental to our goal of improving equality of opportunity by changing the way that people help people. Creating extraordinary positive change in the world, by helping people make ordinary positive change. Chasing excellence for those in need, through promoting excellence for all. If you are looking to improve your capacity to help others and looking to find more fulfilment in the pursuit of excellence as an individual or organisation, apply to become a Just Be Nice Project Partner.
As we end the week with a different Prime Minister to the one we started seven days ago, it is time for us to ask ourselves, where to from here?
Do we want to be a country that is known for it’s outstanding ability to lift people from disadvantage, or for our propensity to keep people there. Do we want to be a country that celebrates success by creating an environment in which anyone who is so inclined, has the support and opportunity to pursue it, in whatever area they wish to achieve success? Do we want to be a country that looks after the most vulnerable? That by looking after the most vulnerable that are already here, set a precedent for those who may seek help from elsewhere. Do we want to be a country that ensures that the people who live here reap the benefits of the ever improving economy of energy and food production. Ensuring that everyone has access to power, water and food without the artificial price-raising of enterprise attacking the access of basic necessities for communities, businesses and individuals across the country. Do we want to be a country that leads the way, not in number, but in policy and innovation, in the direction of economic conservation. Protecting our environment and amazing natural resources not only for today but for future generations. Do we want to be known as world-leaders in environmental protection and energy production, or as followers, bowing to the concerns of the quarterly profit reports of large multi-national corporations. Do we want to be a country that values the education of all its children? Or do we want to prioritise the education of those living in certain postcodes? Do we want to be a country that acknowledges and addresses, effectively and in the long-term, the concerns and difficulties faced by our indigenous peoples? Or do we want to make excuses, blame those who have been dispossessed and disrupted by colonisation and ignore the glaring inequality of opportunity that plagues these communities? Do we want a country run by in-fighting, character poor, news poll pandering, race-baiting, dog whistling rhetoricians? Or by politicians who understand the needs of Australians and the possibilities that their office brings to unite a country under values of true acceptance, mateship and understanding. Do we want to engage further in the politics of division? Of down-blaming, blaming those less fortunate, those who aren’t in power, those who have the least amount of resources to effect change? Or do we want to hold those with the greatest capacity for positive change accountable to actually making that change. Are we committed to rewarding those who play the long game? Those who believe that everyone can do better, if we all work together. Those who believe that a country of humans doesn’t have to be separated into winners and losers, because every person has different possibilities to live fulfilling, safe and happy lives. That removing the barriers to everyone living those lives is a noble priority. Can we acknowledge that people want connection and contribution. That a happy country is one that isn't only not fighting with itself, but not fighting with others. A strong country is one that is comfortable with its identity, with its ability to win over new citizens, leading by example. As we enter yet another leadership change and head towards another federal election, we have a number of important decisions to make, individually and collectively. Where to from here? |
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