Running
Training Schedule: Week 4
Here is this week’s training schedule toward the running of the Marine Corps Marathon in Washing D.C. on 30 October. I’m doing the run in support of an American charity called The Mission Continues, with the aim of stimulating a broader conversation about how we might better address needs for veterans mental health in Australia.
This of course is not the fourth week of training, but a window into my training as I approach the marathon itself. I am recording the final 55 days of training, posting on a weekly basis.
Toward the end of last week, I sensed that the muscles around my shins were showing signs of irritation, and in response I made the decision to rest and stretch more. So, this week I am back running again, feeling fresh and looking forward to the marathon ahead.
My time in sprints on Tuesday was slow, but despite this I felt good with my stride. This is perhaps reflective of my final time in the marathon, and I will know once I am into the race itself. Onwards!
| Day | Date | Load |
| Day 21 | Monday, 26 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 22 | Tuesday, 27 September 2016 | 5 x 1600 m |
| Day 23 | Wednesday, 28 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 24 | Thursday, 29 September 2016 | 16 km |
| Day 25 | Friday, 30 September 2016 | Rest |
| Day 26 | Saturday, 1 October 2016 | 33 km |
| Day 27 | Sunday, 2 October 2016 | Rest |
Training Schedule: Week 3
Training Schedule for the Marine Corps Marathon to be held in Washington DC on 30 October supporting The Mission Continues:
| Day | Date | Load |
| Day 14 | Monday, 19 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 15 | Tuesday, 20 September 2016 | 8 x 400 m, then 4 x 800 m, then 2 x 1600 m |
| Day 16 | Wednesday, 21 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 17 | Thursday, 22 September 2016 | 7 km running for speed |
| Day 18 | Friday, 23 September 2016 | Rest |
| Day 19 | Saturday, 24 September 2016 | 30 km |
| Day 20 | Sunday, 25 September 2016 | Rest |
Training Schedule- Week 2
Week 2 of the lead-in training schedule ahead of the Marine Corps Marathon to be held in Washington D.C. on 30 October supporting The Mission Continues.
| Day | Date | Load |
| Day 7 | Monday, 12 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 8 | Tuesday, 13 September 2016 | 6 x 200 m, then 3 x 400 m, then 3 x 800 m |
| Day 9 | Wednesday, 14 September 2016 | 8 km |
| Day 10 | Thursday, 15 September 2016 | 5 x 1000 m, then 3 x 400 m, then 6 x 200 m |
| Day 11 | Friday, 16 September 2016 | Rest |
| Day 12 | Saturday, 17 September 2016 | 27 km |
| Day 13 | Sunday, 18 September 2016 | Rest |
Lost Focus?
This blog was established in 2010 as part of this initiative called the 10 City Bridge Run to ask how we might use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival.
Some of you might have noticed that I am now talking about the need to improve the mental wellbeing among veterans, more than issues relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
What is this about? Have I lost focus? Is this a sign of me being temperamental? The answer to both of those last two questions is a definite ‘no’.
The 10 City Bridge Run remains squarely focused on child survival. I have realised over the past years (yes, years…how ridiculous is that. I never thought this would consume so much of my time, but at the same time I have no complaint. It is worth my time and energy) that engaging with the institutions and issues surrounding child survival involves more than just throwing a couple of information nights with a little bit of ‘design thinking’ thrown in and reading couple of books by rock star authors.
In order to engage in this process of change, I had to develop my ability to better understand collaboration and social impact. It is one thing to have an opinion about these things that you can crow about over a latte with friends, but it is another matter entirely to put it into practice.
Part of the decision to embrace the Marine Corps Marathon under the umbrella of the citizen-led initiative which I have called the 10 City Bridge Run is to help me to improve my ability to be useful in these areas.
Additionally, it has also taken me back to the roots from where the 10 City Bridge Run began which was an initiative aimed at addressing suicide and depression.
I am learning more, and consequently becoming more effective at helping to stimulate game changing impact.
I would be interested in your thoughts. Tell me if you are satisfied with this apparent detour, or whether you think it is an unnecessary distraction. Either way, I hope you will continue to follow me and challenge me with your comments and questions which itself is a much needed form of support.
The video below talks about my motivation to get involved:
Thanks…You Inspire Me!
Those who have been following might know that I am training for the Marine Corps Marathon to occur on 30 October in Washington D.C.
I find the discipline of following a training schedule difficult at times, and made easier if I can link it to another routine. In this case, it is a 10 minute stretch and abdominal routine to keep me limber for running.
I am asking for you help, in fact it is an invitation to join with me vicariously as I prepare for the marathon. Will you join with me every day through until 30 October for your own 10 minutes of some physical activity that is good for your own wellbeing? It could be meditation, walking the block, or dancing in the lounge room. If I know you are with me, it gives me more motivation to stick to the schedule.
More than this, it is an expression of community, and together with regular physical activity, these are both things that are good for improving mental health.
Please watch the video I made the other day for more details below. I hope I can count on your participation.
Thanks to those who have stepped up already and let me know with a “+10” on my posts. You inspire me! Thank you!
A Runner (Chapter 4)
I have always been a runner. Okay, maybe not always. But it was something that did come naturally to me.
I remember when in secondary school, we would run laps around a circular path in the park that separated the primary school from the secondary school which I attended. At the time, I thought that this path was a long distance, but returning to the area a few years ago I was surprised at how small it actually was. I was usually well out in front. I didn’t see my ability as anything special. It was just what I did.
My passion for running really comes from my father. How or why he started running is something I can’t say for sure, but it is likely to be been influenced by the interest in running during the 1970s. My father read the books of people like James Fixx, and also became involved in orienteering. In fact, he travelled overseas a couple of times to attend orienteering meets.
I would go so far as to say that my father was at his happiest when running. He showed me where he ran, and these become daily routines for me. I don’t think we ever ran together. We weren’t joggers, but runners.
My father ran a marathon. I remember seeing him at the finish line. He was part of a larger movement of runners, but each one also achieving their own personal victory no matter what time they completed the distance.
A few years later in 1983, I followed his example and ran a marathon myself. My time was pretty ordinary, but I was only young. I don’t think I really appreciated the value of training as a means to improve performance at that time.
Around the same time, I remember going to some junior athletics meets, but I just couldn’t get into the intensity of the other competitors and coaches. For me, exercise came naturally and was something I enjoyed. That was enough for me.
One time, I remember meeting Robert De Castella at an event somewhere. I knew he was famous for running, but I don’t think I was really aware of why he was among Australia’s, and even the world’s, greatest runners. Looking back, I cringe at my naivety.
Distance was my thing. I could run with endurance and probably had a gift. I was fast enough, and remember running a pretty quick 5 km course around Albert Park Lake and The Tan course which circumferenced the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne. Even though I was fast, there were always others who were faster. I don’t think I understood then that it might be possible to train and become the best.
I also used to ride my bicycle a lot at that time. On one occasion, in fact the year before I joined the Australian Army, I rode from Melbourne to Singleton. It just seemed like a good thing to do. There was no real occasion, and I have often thought that if I was going to do such a thing now that there would need to be a reason combined with a circus of media and fundraising. Other than getting my photo on the front page of The Argus in Singleton at my uncle’s insistence, it was a simple journey full of adventure. I probably didn’t appreciate my ability to get things done and took a lot of my youth for granted.
After joining the army, I ran long distances for sport and was good at cross country. I later was involved in a sport called “rogaining” where in pairs we would run 24 hour orienteering-style events across large areas of the bush. They were great days.
I’m not quite sure how I came to choose running as the vehicle for raising awareness at the beginning of this journey described by this book. There had been no precedent that led me to setting a challenge involving running, and I wasn’t anything out of the ordinary in terms of being a runner.
I had an idea at the very beginning of this journey which much later would lead me to begin the 10 City Bridge Run. This idea was to undertake something I called the “7 x 7 Bridge Run” where I would run seven laps of a 25 km course looping around Sydney Harbour in seven days as a stunt to raise awareness for homelessness. My only real exposure to homelessness at that time was some volunteer work I had done in London, New York and San Francisco with some great organisations that we impacting people caught in what I would describe as chronic homelessness. I thought it would be worth opening a similar conversation in the city which I lived at the time, Sydney, and that by running across bridges through different suburbs I could symbolically show a connection between people. My contention was that people who were homeless came from somewhere, and the many households that sat around Sydney Harbour were as likely to have their own stories as much as those places that seemed to be like a beacon for people who were homeless. At that time, I had never had any experience of being homeless myself personally.
My efforts were to be entirely self-funded, and I approached a well known charity which seemed to be doing great work in this area. We agreed that through this running, it could be a good vehicle for opening a conversation. I agreed that the charity might be able to do some fundraising of the back of this initiative. None of us knew what the outcome might be, but to their credit they were wholly supportive of a new approach and a new idea. It was new territory to explore.
There was an organisation in Sydney at the time which conducted a walk around the harbour once a year. We were a few months away from when I was going to conduct this event, so I finally was able to connect with the organiser of this harbour walk so that I could introduce myself and suggest that we had an opportunity to share what worked. Together, I thought it was a natural way to collaborate. His response was entirely baffling. After I explained on the phone what I was planning, his response was incredulous as he exclaimed: “Look mate, you can’t just go and make a sandwich then call yourself McDonalds”. I was at a loss as to what he meant, so asked him to explain further. “Mate, if you do that, I will sue you. We have spent a lot of money on our branding, and the last thing we need is some upstart to come along and ruin it for us all.” Welcome to the wonderful world of professional fundraising…
I rang the organisation who I had approached earlier to work with on this endeavour, and explained that the response I received on my phone call presented too much risk to their brand to continue. I was willing to have a go, but I thought there was too much room for unnecessary controversy. That was 2007, and I parked the idea thinking that it would remain forever on the shelf.
It was around this time that I first met my good mate, Tim. He asked what I had been up to, and I explained this conundrum I found myself in. I think Tim is the one person who has seen this whole journey unfold from that point onwards. This is worth remarking about because Tim’s kindness which I have subsequently benefited from first-hand stood in stark contrast to the mean-spirited response from the person who I had encountered earlier. Be careful of your words and actions: they can embolden someone to better things or extinguish dreams that would otherwise make the world a better place.
The organisation I was offering to support were really good about the whole situation, and later invited me to their annual gala evening. I was great that they included me on their invitation, but I still had unresolved feelings about how this 7 x 7 Bridge Run had ended. My instinct was to push back, as I sensed the response I received an enormous injustice on so many levels, but I saw the reputation of the institution as more important than my personal soap box.
And this is where this book could have ended, except for a meeting with a few friends a short while later which changed the conversation forever.
The Small Things
Ok, here is a question for some discussion. Why is it necessary to do a ridiculous running stunt in order to open a conversation about child survival?
Are either of these two even necessary? Does it necessarily follow that by embarking on an ambitious running stunt that it will have enough significance as to open a meaningful conversation? Or to put it another way, would the resources of time, effort and money be better spent in organisation this conversation? And secondly, is this conversation about child survival even necessary, given that there is so much discussion on the world’s stage through institutions such as the United Nations about the issue of Sustainable Development Goals?
Again, to add to the conversation here I’m going to refer to the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Unger as I did in my previous two posts, and again take his writing slightly out of context but in such a way so that it still has a useful application.
Unger’s writing warns us of what he refers to as the ‘illusion of false necessity’, which is to say that a model or way of seeing is so structurally strict that it doesn’t allow the occurrence of any other adjacent possibilities. The question I am asking here is whether I have become fixated on the running stunt at the expense of the task itself?
I can see that there are better ways of going about the journey I have travelled to date, but I am also mindful of the richness of experience that came through the hardship and new horizons that I encountered during this quest. Without that hardship and expanded horizon, my awareness as to what is possible would be stunted and limited which would not be in the service of the task.
Retrospectively, it would be possible to see where I got it wrong and how I could do it better. That is a process called learning. Without the advice from others or my own experience, I must first explore and discover to find out.
I think it has been necessary because the closer I get to this conversation about child survival, the more I am aware of how enormous the body of work and experience that already exists. We should not be aiming at reinventing the wheel, but rather learning from experience to make a useful contribution.
Getting this process right I believe is a balance between the stunt and the conversation. I don’t believe I have succeeded there to date, and that is why I am again lining up for first a rehearsal exercise in March to work out how to do this most effectively ahead of a final push where we hope to bring this conversation to a head in September and October next year.
And there is a paradox in terms of what I am seeking to achieve from all of this. Again, my old school mate Phil prompted me to consider this yesterday by asking whether there might be some simple and small things that we could be doing that of themselves would have a disproportionate impact to improve child survival. I don’t know what those things are. And to be honest, I’m not sure whether for all of the conferences that have been held around the globe to date that we have really cracked this code.
It is an audacious claim, to the point of arrogance, that I propose that through these Design Forum next year we might unlock new potential to reduce child survival. Why wouldn’t that be the case? Breakthroughs happen all the time in many different fields, and not always by the ‘experts’ or the institutional gatekeepers. What is almost without doubt is that the answers, if we can find them, will be found from engaging with people who are most affected by the problem. We will need to draw upon a broad network to find out those things that we don’t know and then through a process of design thinking put together this information to potential arrive at new solutions to make a difference.
There are game changing ideas to be found. Unger declares in his writing that “deep transformations can begin in small initiatives.” So why shouldn’t we believe in the efficacy of what we are trying to achieve? What have we got to lose by trying?
My mate Phil pointed out that it is probably in the small things where a solution that will create a tipping point could be found. What if in the process of conducting these Design Forum we could unlock 10 small but important actions that through the combination of these being applied together they have a game changing impact?
The irony is that to find these small things, I’m proposing to do a very big stunt. Let’s hope it is a worthwhile exercise. We are seeking some simple and small things. Small interventions, which by their application can address the question “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
It’s the small things that matter.
Hope Is The Consequence Of Action
This has been a time of inspiration. Perhaps this is unwarranted, because it also has felt like a time when the sands of opportunity seemed to be avoiding my grasp as they slipped away through my fingers.
Trying something, and it not working. It is a very common experience. A quintessentially human experience. Is it strange that we have forgotten all of the failures from the early years of life during a time when walking might have seem to have been an impossibility? Perhaps it is stranger that we can get so hung up on a point in time when it would appear a plan has ended in failure. Not that we can remember, but if we were to think back to childhood, we would know that through perseverance we would eventually overcome.
I’ve been caught up in the words of a Brazilian philosopher called Roberto Unger recently. The title of this blog comes from a quote of his that I like:
“Change requires neither saintliness nor genius. What it does require is the conviction of the incomparable value of life. Nothing should matter more to us than the attempt to grasp our life while we have it, and to awaken from the slumber of routine, of compromise and prostration, so that we may die only once. Hope is not the condition or cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action. And those who fail in hope should act, practically or conceptually, so that they may hope.”
This post is an update about an epic quest I undertook in 2010 and have yet to complete. I called that quest the 10 City Bridge Run. The purpose of the quest was to address an ambitious question through a conversation asking: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?” The method was all the more ambitious to the point of ridiculous: I proposed a stunt to highlight the conversation about child survival where I would run 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries.
Long story short, I have completed the stunt, but not yet done justice to the conversation. And in between these two events there is a book I am yet to publish and send to my supporters. That book is to be called Life Bridge, and will feature a photo essay with 100 pictures of human bridges to illustrate that it is through our connections that change can take place.
I am very aware of ways this could have been simpler, or ways the execution to date could have been more effective. It has been lumpy in parts, but that too is part of the journey.
And so that brings me to this point about failure, about inspiration, and about hope where I began the post. A reasonable person would at this point in time cut their losses and apologise saying that it was all too much trouble, and that they were not up to the task. As I write that, I know that I cannot accept this as failure, and hear the words of George Bernard Shaw. You know the ones: “the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.”
And so yes, I have been staring down failure as I interpret what this journey has meant.
Staring down failure because there is inspiration. Inspiration from the fresh initiative called the Sustainable Development Goals which will replace the United Nations Millennium Development Goals when they expire at the end of this year. Inspiration because I know there is purpose in holding this conversation, and that hardship is part and parcel of trying to achieve difficult things. And inspiration from a conversation I had in Newcastle recently where someone challenged me to look again at what I had achieved.
Let me explain this incident from Newcastle briefly. Back in 2009, I ran what was the initiative that preceded this 10 City Bridge Run initiative. In 2009, I called it the 9 City Bridge Run, and it was undertaken in response to the suicides of many friends as an effort to show that resilience and community wellbeing could be counterpoints to the conversation that was prevalent about depression and suicide. Long story short, that journey was personally a success, but a complete failure in attempting to have some impact on an issue which I considered to be important.
Unger refreshingly argues that change can be piecemeal, fragmentary, gradual and experimental. His words help to reframe our perspective: “we should not associate radical change with wholesale change, and gradual change with inconsequential change.”
The strength in Unger’s words to me is this: “To grasp what it can become” is necessary to embrace is we are to overcome the failure of structural imagination. To be sure, I have take Unger’s words out of the context they were written for, but I believe that remain entirely relevant to this situation.
And so from that conversation in Newcastle, I realised a few things. And this is where you come into the picture.
I realised that my efforts have been too much me pushing. As valiant as that might be, it leaves little room for the ‘us’ to truly collaborate on this epic quest.
I realised that concluding this quest through the publication of the book Life Bridge and the holding of a series of Design Forum to address this conversation about child survival required more input from others. It was possible, but it wasn’t just a matter of pushing harder from where I am now. I need to relent a little to invite others in to this space.
I also realised that what I achieved in 2009 and in the recent 10 City Bridge Run was worth exploring further. And this has pointed me to the next steps. And I’ll come to that shortly at the end of this blog.
Mao famously had a quote to ‘let a hundred flowers bloom’ which was actually a ruse to out the intellectuals within Chinese society so that their influence could be purged by “enticing the snakes out of their caves.” I think that Mao was definitely onto something. Not the crackdown of dissidents, but an openness to others being involved.
One of the last acts of the 10 City Bridge Run involved me delivering a letter to The Hon Julie Bishop MP, Australia’s Foreign Minister, asking her to be the champion for this initiative. Her staff replied in time, and I recorded a video when I was in Korea earlier this year just after receiving their message. Watch it below:
And this is where you come in. I’m asking for some help. I’m inviting 100 people to be our champions of change, to pick up the slack where Julie Bishop is unable to put her shoulder to the wheel. Returning to Unger, I note his words: “Great ideas are not beyond the reach of ordinary people.” So please note that I am looking for 100 champions of change, and you could be one. There will be more on that in a later blog post.
But here is the final comment, and the point of this blog post. Hope is the consequence of action. What I am proposing is to return to my initiative from 2009, and next year in March 2016, to run 16 runs in 16 towns across NSW in 16 successive day, and in each of those towns it is conducted where there is a group, individual or organisation that is prepared to host a Design Forum. The issue will be the same one I championed in 2009 which was to address the taboo issue of depression and suicide. The reason for this activity in March is to provide a rehearsal for the big event in September/October 2016.
So then in mid-September through until mid-late October over the course of a month, I undertake to run 17 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 17 cities across more than 10 countries. In both the March and the September/October dates, I will be inviting others to run with me, and more about that later. And importantly for the September/October event, in each of the cities, and in other cities even where running doesn’t take place, I will be asking people to organise these Design Forum for me. Why 17? Because that is the new number of Sustainable Development Goals. What about child survival? That remains a key focus, but also we will be taking a holistic focus in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Many friends have given me very good counsel about my execution of the 10 City Bridge Run, noting my shortfall on a reliable team, social media strategy and media coverage. Those are all very good comments, and I completely accept the need for improvement in those areas as well as many other. We now have an opportunity to get this right, but I seriously need the help from others.
We are at a Turning Point where Hope is the consequence of Action. And to achieve this Turning Point, it is necessary for us to take The Next Step, together.
Five Books For Change
Last December, I was standing on a bridge crossing the Clyde River n Glasgow which was completely shrouded in fog. I stopped a moment to record a short video to Bill and Melinda Gates, and asked them for their recommendation of five books to help make change happen.
Maybe you saw this video if you were following my journey. It was the day after I had run the eighth leg of the 10 City Bridge Run that concluded in January this year where I ran across 10 cities as a stunt to open a conversation about improving child survival.
The video is below, and while I have forwarded it through social media, I don’t now that I have exhausted every avenue to pass the message to Bill and Melinda Gates. And even if it did reach their gatekeepers, there is no guarantee that they would see it personally, or even have the time to respond.
Well, I haven’t given up on them, and will keep looking for ways to send this “message in a bottle” to them.
In the meantime, I made my own list of Five Books For Change that have most influenced my thinking as I worked through the 10 City Bridge Run epic quest ahead of a series of Design Forums to ask “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
And here is the list, and in no particular order. They are all great books!
- Glimmer: how design can transform your business, your life, and maybe even the world, Warren Berger, Random House Nosiness Books, 2009
- Reframe: how to solve the world’s trickiest problems, Eric Knight, Black Inc, 2012
- On Becoming An Artist: reinventing yourself through mindful creativity, Ellen J. Langer, Ballantine Books, 2005
- The End Of Poverty: how we can make it happen in our lifetime, Jeffrey Sachs (forward by Bono), Penguin Books, 2005
- The Imaginations Of Unreasonable Men: inspiration, vision, and purpose in the quest to end malaria, Bill Shore, Public Affairs, 2010
There were other books as well that I had to cut from the list. I asked Bill and Melinda Gates for five books, and so I limited myself to five books too.
You might have a different opinion, or some other books that I didn’t consider. I hope you do, and I hope you might share them here too! Write a review of your favourite book for making change happen as it relates to improving the delivery of child survival, and I’ll add it here on the blog (you write the blog and I can post it without editing it).
As for getting in touch with Bill and Melinda, well I’m sill trying. You can help by forwarding this blog, and the video message to the Gates’ is shown below. Personally, I like the list I have already, but this journey is about building a conversation and sharing how we see the world, so it would be nice to know how they think and what they would recommend we read!
ReThinking The Design Forum
In 2010 I had an idea to do something that would both address child survival, and at the same time show the capacity we have together for collaboration, even if the beginning of our efforts is an individual act of decision.
The plan was to run 10 sub-marathons each of 24 km in 10 cities across 10 countries, and at the end convene a Design Forum to somehow find ways to impact the issue.
Four years passed until I was able to commence in 2014, during which time there was frustration to be found in spades, hopes dashed, thwarting by circumstances such as injury and access to resources.
Then in mid-September 2014 I commenced the journey. It was prudent not to have commenced before then, despite the misgivings this might have created in the minds of other people. I didn’t have the resources to complete the journey, and if I had began it would have been a disaster for me personally.
Long story short, I completed the running journey late on a cold, dark and wet night in early January in New York. The running was always a stunt to frame the Design Forum. In the meantime, what I learnt was that I still needed more time to prepare for this conversation.
The running at took place at the end of last year informed the conduct of the Design Forum. Doors were opened, I saw many places, experiences shaped my thinking. It was a personal journey that was extremely instructive. And now it is time to turn attention to the Design Forum.
The Design Forum have actually commenced already. It is a series of 10 events that will occur in each of e cities where running took place to open a conversation, and this conversation will be extended into other places through the participation of others. The first Design Forum was in Osaka, and that is being extended presently by a number of teams of great people with whom I am engaged in a process of examine Human Centred Design through an introductory course from IDEO/Acumen Fund.
Until last night, I had a plan to commence the remaining Design Forums as early as next month in Port Moresby, with others following in May. If I learnt anything from my running it was that action is important now, but that good preparation beforehand will ensure that action has impact. I have been ReThinking the Design Forum as I plan out my year ahead, and now recognise that there is some personal maintenance issues I need to attend to called ‘working to earn some money’ before I can suitably commit my time and energy more fully to convening the Design Forum. Besides which, to conduct them right now would be a financial stretch. It doesn’t mean not possible, but perhaps in the immediate sense, not prudent right now.
The good news is that this gives more time for preparation. And the second (next Design Forum) is likely to be held in early August in Port Moresby. That might seem like a long time away, but there is a lot to organise before then and the time will pass quickly. Following Port Moresby, the remaining eight Design Forum will occur to conclude in Seoul towards the end of October. It will be a pretty intense period, but will also frame a particular window of activity inside of which many people can engage to help us address this question: “how might we use our networks to improve the delivery of child survival?”
We are making progress, maybe not immediately like some people might expect, but we are getting there. Come August, I would expect a few other things to have been addressed to:
- Engaging with media
- Making it clear how people can get involved in the Design Forum
- Building a robust team to help with the conduct of the Design Forum
- More fully engaging with an inspiring community of practitioners who are already involved to help improve child survival
- Building support for a petition to go to Australia’s Foreign Minister The Hon Julie Bishop MP asking her to be the Official Champion for the final Design Forum to be held in Seoul
- Completing the book Life Bridge which people’s earlier contributions have helped fund as a way to enable to conduct of this epic journey. I anticipate the book might be completed and handed over to the designers/publishers in late June, aiming to have it ready for distribution after publishing by early August. That is an ambitious timeline, but also achievable.
There is always merit in ReThinking your position, not to change your mind every five minutes, but through a process of iteration to come up with a better and more workable solution.
With your help, together we can engage in these series of Design Forum and work to improve the delivery of child survival.
Details about how you can engage coming soon!
Building Bridges 