| "See
Change ... "
(Excerted & updated from: Parliamentary Commissioner for the
Environment (PCE). 2004. See Change: Learning and education
for sustainability". Wellington: PCE.; p120)
My
life was once all about numbers. Salary with six figures. Weeks
of one hundred working hours. Home with eight bedrooms, five TVs,
and four kids who hardly knew me. Twenty years creating those advertisements
that drive you to buy more, spend more, throw away yesterday's purchases
to make room for today's new models. Making ads that assure you
all is well when that big friendly multi-national with the smiling
frontman wants to build a health hazard in your backyard. Over time,
the bigger the clients, the smaller their consciences, the more
uneasy with it all I became.
Then
an email arrived from Nepal; a request for design assistance
for one man's project. He'd set up a web-based way of redistributing
Khatmandu's meagre surpluses to the hill villages. Office workers
logged on to give their address and a truck would call to collect
their spare schoolbooks, shoes and blankets; simple, and effective.
For me, the light went on. This was a better use for the web than
the consumer sites I was building. This was a better purpose in
life than the life I was leading. I could redirect my advertising
skills and experience to good causes, full-time. It led me to thinking
that if enough skilled advertising people pledged just a little
of their time too, we could create an online global network of advertising
resources powerful enough to make a difference. So my wife and I
set up The Global Bridge to do just that.
Once
the decision was made in favour of change, once my family
and I were committed to it, the transition from consumer values
to sustainable values flowed like a powerful river - overcoming
seemingly impossible obstacles. It seemed the more money we had
made, the more we owed; we had no capital with which to finance
this dream - in fact we were in debt. But we were 100% committed,
and that's all it took.
I
left my job as Creative Director for a well-known multimedia
firm and we sold everything we owned (for about 8% of what we paid
for it), in order to travel to wherever we were needed most, and
to stay there for as long as we were needed. The day we moved out
of our house, we moved onto a seventy-year-old 36-foot wooden sailboat
that we had financed to the mast-tops.
In
the first three years we sailed the full length of New Zealand's
East coast,
creating educational multimedia for dolphin and albatross projects
with DoC, Forest and Bird and the UK's Whale and Dolphin Conservation
Society. In 2004, we sailed to Tonga, partnering with Books Without
Borders, AUSAID and the local community.
Our
sons are home-schooled, we work together as a family, travel
the world, and live on the smell of an olive-oily rag. And best
of all, success is now measured by what we've been able to give
away.
Life
is good.
Dene
and Pamela Waring, Tonga, June 2004
>
"Gimme 3 good reasons..."
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