Brenton Eccles

Disrupting the nation in the name of ending poverty

I’m going to keep a ‘trip diary’ of sorts for the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY road trip. I’ve come to see the possibility that it’s going to be one of those ‘making’ events of my life, so the least I can do is to record it.

You’ll probably find that it’ll be a lot more blunt and to the point once the trip actually begins, because I’ll be blogging from my iPhone and I find it really frustrating to write long things on the iPhone. It’s also scary. Have you ever written lots of something and had an app reset? I have.

I’ll begin with the first training day…

Sunday, 18th April @ Sidney Myer Asia Center, Melbourne

I received an e-mail from my group leader on Saturday evening, which I feel sums up what the road trip entails and what the mood of most of us ambassadors is like:

I can’t wait to begin our trek to Canberra – create some memories, stalk some politicians and generally disrupt the nation in the name of ending poverty.

With this quote in mind, I hope the context of the road trip and what we hope to achieve is pretty clear – because that’s a very good summary. With that established, let me describe my day…

I’d like to keep the tone fairly positive, to emphasise just how awesome the day was – so suffice to say of the early hours of Sunday that I missed the train that would have got me to Melbourne on time and then experienced the fun of my car breaking down – but most appropriately right outside the Ballarat train station.

Luckily, the first training day was very relaxed and introductory so that all I missed were a few activities – you know, the ‘getting to know you’ type stuff of which there was plenty more throughout the day.

When I arrived, at about 10.30AM, all of the ambassadors and organizers were packing into one of the lecture centers at the venue for an overview of the talking points related to extreme poverty – meaning, the stuff that we can talk to the general public about without going on a long-winded discussion that throws their ability to relate to what we’re saying. I’ll summarise those talking points in seperate entries before the trip.

If I had to quickly summarise what we’re going to be asking for in this campaign, it is simply that Australia keep to the promise it made when agreeing to the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000 – which we can achieve, it has been stated numerous times.

In addition to being schooled on the issues surrounding extreme poverty, there were other inspiring talks – both of which brought up familiar quotes, which I’ll paraphrase:

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
- (Can’t remember)- ?

“Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world.”
-Margaret Mead

What was increasingly more inspiring than all of the talks and digital media presented, however, was interfacing with the group that I’ll be taking this journey with.

Taking on social causes can be, in my experience, very isolating because it seems like you’re one of very few that cares – it’s suffocating and can leave you feeling emotionally exhausted. Enter this MPH campaign, and suddenly I’m surrounded by people who say that they’d ‘feel worthless’ if they weren’t doing something to help the bigger picture.

It’s exciting to meet more people that ‘get a kick’ from caring about society.

If you’ve known me in the past, you’d know that my activism has not extended at all beyond pointing to problems and solutions – but basically doing nothing about it. This is the first time I’ve actually decided that I’m cleanly educated on the issues enough to ‘do something’ – and perhaps the sense that I needed to be really well informed in the first place was acting as a barrier to doing anything.

If I left the first training day with anything, it was with a sense that my apathy has been cured and that my work with MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY almost feels like (honestly) the start of my career. I hope so.

My progress with activist tasks:

I’ve had quite a week of being unwell, which has certainly slowed down progress on things I’ve been needing to do. Among the list of things I’ve had to postpone is included various pre-road trip errands for the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY road trip, and there’s 15 days to go until it all officially begins.

I don’t want to dramatise my ‘behindedness’. I just need to approach my local paper with the press release I’ve written and contact my local MP – David Hawker. You can imagine that I didn’t want to do either of these while feeling the best part of black death warmed up.

We’re going to be tweeting using the tag #mphrt, which is going to be an interesting way to see ambassadors across the country make progress reports. If you aren’t already following me on twitter I’d recommend it because I’ll be using it more than anything to keep you all updated with the progress of the MPH trip.

The next day of training is on Sunday 25th, which I’m very excited about! I’ll keep you all posted.

See my first post on the road trip for context: ‘TheROADTrip, from 8th-15th May’.

TheROADTrip, from 8th-15th May

Earlier in the year, I was informed through Facebook by an acquantince of an activist event they thought I might be interested in being part of.

They invited me to submit an application to be a part of MakePOVERTYHistory’s Road Trip, and initially I didn’t apply.

I tend often to be skeptical of a lot of activist projects, however as I researched this particular event I was pleased to find that a similar cause had been pursued years earlier – with success:

In 2007 over 700 young Australians took to the road to help create just this world. The ZEROSEVEN Road Trip made history when it created the public support and political will to increase Australia’s foreign aid from 0.3% to 0.5% of GNI by 2015. This historic increase of over $2.3 billion has brought Australia closer to its promise of 0.7%. But it’s not enough.

After many weeks of thinking about this initiative, I sent in an application – with special consideration for the past success of events in mind.

I found the experience of writing the application incredibly rewarding, because the questions involved required that I respond to the implication that I would be a good advocate for the world’s starving and poorest.

I didn’t sugar-coat my application, either, but rather made it clear that I am somewhat skeptical that merely pledging more funds towards a problem (essentially ‘throwing money at a problem’) will be able to adequately solve it. Of course, that assumes that the only action being taken to minimise extreme poverty is to devote capital.

It would be a major stretch to assume that the various humanitarian organizations present ‘in the thick’ of poverty stricken conditions are only there because of funding to do their work – it’s just that it makes it a lot easier to do it, and more of it.

During the 2010 road trip, from the 8th ’til 15th of May, I will be involved with 1000 other young activists from across the nation in spreading the message that we can put an end to extreme poverty – that’s it’s not an immutable reality of the human condition, or some such thing. Our work will include:

…flash mobs, meetings with MPs and businesses, speeches at schools, music events and more, we will generate the groundswell of support necessary to achieve real change.

The first of three training days for the event will commence on the 18th of April, continuing on the 25th and the 2nd of May.

More on this as the work unfolds.

There’s nowhere to begin, so I’ll start here…

Here's a cocktail I recently had in the city (Melbourne), called 'the fist'. It was pretty amazing. Too bad I can't remember where it was.

I said I’d begin blogging again in 2010, and though it’s now April I feel it’s time to commit to that.

I’ve had to reflect upon right motives to write, publicly. In the past, it’s clear to me that my writing online has been of the sort where the reader feels as though they’re being talked at by the writer – as opposed to the type intended to elicit dialogue.

I think that’s a non-constructive method of writing, in almost every case. It seems to me that the basic implication is that to communicate is to ‘share in common’, and not just to get something off one’s chest.

When one reads, don’t we want to think about what we’ve read – at least in some way?

So, let me do my best to share in common with as many of you as I can.

I expect us to learn much from each other, both in successes and failings.

In closing, a thought from Alice Bailey seems proper:

The only regret that is justifiable, is based on failure to learn the lessons of failure.

- 1944