Community-First

From a young age I watched as my parents and grandparents gave back to their community as a matter of first principle, non negotiable, a way of life.

Whether it was through volunteer board positions (Dad used to come home smelling like cigarette smoke because the meetings were at the Pub and Mum used to go to Dubbo for Life Education meetings with Healthy Harold), provision of resources (eg hay for seating and cakes and brownies for street stalls), sharing of land for trials, giving of money for charity (walkathons/sponsor children) and mostly, their time...setting up, packing up, making plans, organising things, canteening, bbqing, driving kids, billeting kids... the list goes on.

The whole family was all in, despite living 40km from town and running a busy farm and working...

We didn't know any different - if we were involved in it, Mum and Dad and my 3 grandparents, were also onboard and helping in whatever way/s they could.

It was a community-first approach.

It's how I've lived my life.

I was 8 when I organised my first fundraiser... for the Save the Koala Foundation.. my friends thought I was weird but they gave me their 10c and coloured in a picture of a Koala so we could send $30 something dollars to the organisation and do our bit.

Since then I've helped raise and leverage more than $50million in funding and investment for projects and enterprises across rural Australia.

My business (and often my personal income) has come second to my community contribution, many, many times.

I have dedicated at least 10 hours every week (and during my term as President of the Australian Opal Centre sometimes 30hrs/week) to some kind of community giving...

I have been berated for this by almost every single business advisor and coach that I've worked with...and I've worked with many...

And I have spent a lot of time defending and getting angry at them for not understanding but what I know to be true is that because they didn't grow up in the unique and generous eco-system that I did, where it is not even second nature, it's DNA driven, that they simply cannot understand WHY I would do such a thing?!

Just the same as the ego-centric men who have accused me and my other female volunteer colleagues of only being in it for ourselves when we were gifting time, money and IP and our wholeselves to a project that everyone else benefited from, except us!

I'm not going to try to convince anyone that they should do it my way or that community-first is the only way, but what I do know is that if everyone waits until their finances are in order or they have more time or that they trust someone else will do it - that by then, our communities will have eroded so far they will be unrecognisable and everyone will be scratching their heads wondering... WTF happened, we used to have such an amazing community.

And the reason will be that we changed the eco-system from community-first to self-only.

This is NOT a post to advocate for the martyr.. I've done a lot of work to shift my deeply entrenched martyr complex too.. it's a cry out for a shifting tide from the extractive narcissistic model of business and life to something that serves the individual whilst growing the community.

It requires that we show up.

More than the same 10 people who are like me and can't not show up...

Your attention on your community is crucial.. however you define it. A community-first way of thinking requires that you give in places where the return is not guaranteed is most likely not financial and is most certainly going to give you a headache.. but if we don't, what have we got left?