Big ambitions on the horizon, the “big spending board” is not looking at spending less, but making more. The consensus is Permaculture Australia needs to be seriously considering our identity, and our future. Who are we? What do we do? And how are we going to make the money we need to change the world, at every scale, sink or swim.
Call for bold action
From my heart, me, Sam, our youth are drowning in a hopeless future. A future run by AI and callous tech billionaires on a dystopic sinking ship. We need a revolution and we know that. But this revolution can’t be a quiet one peddling slowly in the background, maybe one day gearing up to do something. This revolution needs to be the central focus of those committed to it, and I am wholeheartedly of the belief that means it needs to support families, young people, career driven individuals, and the like.
The change we need
Currently permaculture Australia cannot support the incredible people that run it, which means they must either dig deep and become self-made business people to stay focused on permaculture (driving them away from being able to afford the time to volunteer), struggle financially, or do it part-time. The change we need is not a parttime gig, but a full time journey to a better future. There is a trillion dollar carbon off-setting industry, a 1.2 trillion dollar corporate social responsibility industry, a 7.3 trillion dollar education industry, and of course a lot more, all extremely relevant to our beautiful little organisation. Our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and all future generations need us to grab these potential opportunities by the horns. We need to hit hard or we won’t have a home to go to.
Permaculture Australia’s Full Potential
So with that, here’s the absolute excitement of what is happening: The event circle is charging forward with our biggest potential income for Permaculture Australia, and a culture of self-financing is being embraced in many circles. Different circles are talking about how money is going to come into their activities, and how key people are going to be taken care of. The culture of Permaculture Australia was born aiming for the stars, so we need to make sure we’re adequately resourced to get there.
Aligning for Collective Impact
Hopefully all of us here at Permaculture Australia are lining up together as the team necessary to further this, focused on how activities can bring in resources, namely money in the context of a charity, and I am personally very willing to work with anyone who is. Excitement is a natural disposition for me, considering the possible future we could live in and I am looking forward to what this future holds if we act.
Excuse my religiosity but I must wrap this up with a small excerpt from the Holy Quran as it is what steadies my heart in a cataclysmic sea of current and future events:
“Corruption has spread on land and sea as a result of what people’s hands have done, so that Allah may cause them to taste ‘the consequences of’ some of their deeds and perhaps they might return ‘to the right path’.”
May we all focus on the path ahead and find our guiding lights to keep our hearts buoyant and determined in increasingly dark times.
Thanks,
Sam Parker-Davies
Treasurer & Board Youth Ambassador