Lunch Time Chat at St James Ethics Centre

Wednesday October 13th

To create safe places for people to be present for each other, and to create the common ground for discussion about the issues that they deem important.  A space for real LISTENING.
Does that sound like a Conversation?  Well these are terms used to describe the Queens Trust Youth Leadership Forum this year. A week long residential for 100, selected young Australians to dialogue about those issues.

  We were fortunate to have Mary McCrudden, a delegate to this year's Forum, talk about her experience there this year.

Items that came up for the 100 participants were grist for the Conversations mill and point to the universality of these themes.

• Education
• Health
• Reconciliation
• Social Cohesion
• Environment
• Families

And a range of others.
All topics were given an in depth airing and each group or team present created their 'vision' for Australia.  These have been passed along to our Prime Minister and if Mary and her quality of thinking are any indication of the group,  Mr Howard would be well served to pay serious attention.
I note with some amusement that, even though participants came from a wide sampling of people, lawyers, economists, academics, health workers, self-employed, and business people, no mention was made of economics.  In other words the dollars were in some way less important than is typical of our current measurements.

Mary told us that what was much more important to her personally in this forum was the PROCESS they had to go through to get to the consensus necessary to create meaningful outcomes.  To be obliged to really LISTEN to each other and their stories and that allowed a kind of healing to take place.

In the final analysis, the action we must  take in the world revolves around all of us individually taking responsibility for the whole.  As Mary put it,  "It is up to ME to make it be."

And I think she will too.  Thank you Mary.

Next  Conversation at St James Ethics Centre will be on November 10th