Reflections on setting out across the nation with the world’s cream of the crop (in terms of personality, and more) to bring about change in the world, for those who have no voice.
It’s now over a week since the road trip ended [and as of publication, over a month], and having been meaning to collect my thoughts on the whole experience I feel that the time is now well due.
I’ve sat down a couple of times in attempt to do this and, for whatever reason, each time I have found myself not quite able to find the right place to begin. I know that even as I sit at this kitchen table in the light of this beautifully overcast day that I’m going to get distracted and write this in blasts of inspiration.
I suppose it might be worthwhile to attempt to articulate this in the form of an after the fact diary, a narrative of sorts to describe the week that was – it was my original intent to do it in this way on the road, but I didn’t find enough time to write much between the campaigning and sleeping. I’m going to begin with where it began, on the Saturday morning in Melbourne. (more…)
I haven’t written about the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY training for the road trip since the first weekend of training. It’s time to update you all on the final two weekends that I’ve just been through, which were located down in Collingwood.
Weekend #2 (25th April):
Was a fairly standard sort of day really. We covered the policy asks for the campaign, talked about ‘tough’ questions and did a lot of activities related to bringing in more of a community aspect among us ambassadors.
Weekend #3 (2nd May):
Most of the day seemed like a chance to talk about ourselves, and a final chance to go over the logistics of the trip and preparing some props to take with us. Along with that I got the first workout I’d had in a week, learning a flashdance that we’ll be doing in the centre of Melbourne on Saturday to get the publics attention – to Gaga’s Paparazzi (a rather unfortunate choice, but it’ll still be fun):
We also found out our groups routes. My group will be going down through Geelong, Colac, Ballarat, Bendigo and finally up to the summit in Canberra.
I was so tired during the training that after lunch an a coffee I fell asleep on a beanbag and had to be woken up two or three times by fellow ambassadors, they did it quietly so that nobody else noticed. That’s what full on, restless yet fun weekends do.
This week is the final chance to organize various things before the trip begins on Saturday morning. I’ve sent another press release to the media, this time about our petition (see it at the Act to End Poverty) that we’re going to be working on gaining 40,000 signatures for during the trip.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d contacted my local paper with a press release about the trip as a whole, and I was successful in being contacted by them about it. It’s just that they chose a really bad time to call, 9AM on a Monday morning – and I wasn’t exactly in a position to answer the phone, nor to call them back because the paper had easily gone to press by the time I got the chance to.
I’m hoping to get contacted back by my paper about this press release, because I’m going to be around the area and contactable basically all week. I’ll probably follow up my e-mailed press release with a phone call in a few hours.
I could elaborate on the details of the training days and what I’ve been doing thus far much more, but I really cannot be bothered – I’m just ready to get started on the trip and started to feel a little exhausted on the lead up to the trip. So let’s bring it on folks. As promised, I’ll be updating as the road trip progresses on a (hopefully) daily basis.
