It feels good to be (re)inspired.
The Purpose Business was once again pleased to be part of the Festival for the Future, Aotearoa’s biggest summit on leadership and innovation for impact, organised by Inspiring Stories.
It was a joy to be a part of the team providing the online streaming of the 3 day event and below I share some of my key takeaways.
The most striking thing for me was the reminder that amazing things are happening to make positive social and environmental impacts in our communities. You simply can’t help but be inspired and for me it served to rejuvenate my motivation for my own work. Sadly, you are unlikely to find these stories being reported in mainstream media but during opportunities such as this, of a community of like minded people coming together (whether in person or online), you will be inspired.
The Festival for the Future has a significant focus on youth, with teenagers and young adults being given the platform to share their initiatives while connecting with businesses. One such teenager who has been arranging beach clean ups near her home discovered a number of homeless people sleeping permanently at the beach in tents. So in addition to having volunteers collect rubbish, they are now also bringing clothes and food to these people whilst working with them to apply for housing. A number of the speakers are youth leaders who are working with district councils to improve facilities in their community. One project is identifying challenges for wheelchair access around their town and designing improvements that will help parents walking with prams, people who have accidents and are temporarily in wheelchairs as well as those who rely everyday on wheelchairs or mobility scooters to move around their community. These stories remind us that we are never too young or old to take positive action.
“The work of building community and the work of leadership is about getting each person to find their mettle and their tools, skills, story and their superpower, for engagement, for participation. A lot of it is giving folks the belief and understanding that they can do something to impact communities.”
A special highlight for me was the opportunity to host a fireside chat with Maya Soetoro-Ng, co-founder at the Institute for Climate and Peace, consultant with the Obama Foundation, and an Edmund Hillary Fellow. We discussed crucial topics from the intersection of climate change and peacebuilding, leadership development, and youth engagement, through the lens of the climate crisis.
Long after the conversation, the following really stayed with me from my chat with Maya:
Nurture places or space that allow curiosity to grow;
Take opportunities to see and experience things from multiple perspectives such as culture, age, location and even other species; and
Watch the use of buzzwords when you are sharing ideas. Keeping to simple language will enable a wider audience to grasp the concept and connect you with other passionate people focused on community sourced solutions.
The festival celebrated other founders and leaders of businesses with a clear purpose, who shared their journey to date. These included:
- Ezra Hirawani who co-founded Nau Mai Rā – a Māori owned electricity retailer with a mission to tackle power poverty;
- Sonya Williams and Brooke Roberts who co-founded Sharesies – a wealth development platform working to create financial empowerment for everyone, providing someone with $5 and someone with $5 million the same investment opportunities; and
- Sam Stubbs the Founder and Managing Director of Simplicity, NZ’s fastest growing fund manager. Simplicity is a non-profit KiwiSaver Scheme with over $4B in funds under management. It gives 15% of all fees to charity, and invests with a conscience, and has now gifted more than $4M to great Kiwi causes.
Sometimes we can get into a negative headspace working in this field but there’s a whole world of positive stories of impact and action to reinspire; of individuals and businesses being the very force for good that TPB champions.
Main contributor: Dr. Merrin Pearse, The Purpose Business
Latest thinking
