‘Re Greening Our Lives’ towards Strengths Based Practices Conference 

Has the essential focus on three aspects of our living on this Planet.

1         Population

2         Environment and 

3         Human Services

The Flow:

By reaffirming the fundamental faith in the centrality of population, environment and human services this conference provides an opportunity to review the greening and re-greening processes that are occurring in different nations, and different communities in their own silos.   In a rapidly changing social, political, and economic nature of our societies a more participative people centred community engagement and collaborative practice appears promising. The devolution of public responsibilities, emerging localisation, rapid changes in the human services and welfare sectors have greatly accelerated and created both, new opportunities and challenges for human development.

Central Concerns:

1         Well being of human kind

2         Environment centring

3         Sustainable approaches

4         What is going right today? and

5         How can we continue to do that right thing even in the future?

Many cultures in human history have recognized the need for harmony between the environment, society and economy. What is new is an articulation of these ideas in the context of a global industrial and information society.

·This Conference is  about today and tomorrow

·It is about creating  new metaphors, practical insights that will get us through today and into the future

Young People talk and we listen:

A deliberate departure in this conference from previous attempts is to bring to the forefront, the youth of our nations. The Conference aims to integrate the growing aspirations and ambitions of youth and signal the journey of hearing to the future leaders. Also it wishes to programme some select narratives, success stories and joint approaches and papers from the  Scientist and the Social Worker, the technologist and the user, the political elites and their subjects, an industrialist and  an end user, urban planners and citizens, activists, journalists and  the expert in discourse with the laypeople.

Mutual reflection and mutually listening as opposed to living in silos and hoping for technological fixes for our society: This is our goal.

How is this different from previous plethora and myriads of conferences?

750 Outstanding Young men and women, from different professions, trades and activities, with formal and informal persuasions, researchers and students, doctoral and post doctoral workers, activists from indigenous, environmental and political arena, youth workers,  health and allied health and young artists from around the world

In conversation spaces with

250 Outstanding leaders- Men and Women, Scientists, Planners, Management Professionals, Psychologists, Educationists, Economists, Social Scientists, Spiritual leaders, Human Services Workers,  Health activists, Specialists in mainstream and alternate health visions, Psycho Social and therapy professionals, Public Administrators Politicians in office, Activists  from Indigenous, Environmental and Political arena, workers in areas of Human Rights, Children’s, Young peoples and Women Health and Artists from around the world.

Conversations that take place here will assist each participants upon return to their countries to organise, re-focus their content and highlight on local issues and attempt re-greening.

This group of 1000 outstanding leaders of today and tomorrow will be chosen and invited for their commitment, uniqueness in continuing their passion for re greening our lives. 

Nominations:

If you are a leader today, send us a post card express your interest and let us all join together in a mentoring opportunity.

This is your opportunity to prepare, nurture and leave your legacy.

Young and Outstanding? Full of Zest and idealism?

If you happen to be young and consider yourself out of the ordinary, have a vision about human values, what kind of society we need to build?  Or wish to talk about your friend, colleague who could come to this conference connect with us or join in.

An ever greening world cannot be born until each of us as civil citizens see and recognises the human and the non human side of our nature   Re greening our Lives- Sarawak 2010 is your opportunity to work with today’s best leaders, prepare your ground and shape your destiny. - Over three days, in what   we would call as ‘The Sarawak Base Camp’

25-28 November 2010

Three Questions:

·         What happens in Sarawak?

·         What after the conference?

·         Will there be a follow-up?

·         750 young men and women and 250 elders in mentoring roles meet have conversations and prepare wide ranging strategies for Greening Our lives

·         Young people and mentors return to their respective countries to launch a movement in their own habitat. A five year strategy towards Greening Our lives will be born

·         Yes hopefully all  first 1000 participants will meet for yet another conversation 5 years from now

Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live, a life worth remembering. Despite the awesome powers of technology many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to each other’s stories once again.

Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom 2006

What new perspective?

Let us imagine The Chief Minster  or Premier or Governor of your State or Country, The Director General of your Health or even the Minister for Health or Food or President Barak Obama’s Science Advisor Dr John P Holdren, Dr Abdul Kalam, Former President of India, Mr Al Gore, himself,   several other Nobel laureates, Vice Chancellors and academics of some of your most prestigious universities in your Country, see themselves firstly as  members of their own community in which they live, and then in their professional practitioner or expert scientist or practicing politician roles.  If they perceive themselves as members of the community in the first place, they would be eager to share what they have and ultimately eager to learn from what others have in their communities.

This is the key to community engagement for sustainable transformations for all people.

 The conference aims to bring such leaders to envisage, shape strategic, naked decisions to take action for a more sustainable world.

Isn’t this the time for big words from the mind to change into words of the heart?

Time for using information, intuition and common sense in the wake of our existing crisis?  and to

Ask experts to unmask their language and to nurture intergenerational understanding?

Isn’t’ it time for a conference that sets trends and resolves to re-green our lives!

This is the preliminary alert!

Please join our commitment for the Re-Greening our lives.

Who DRIVES THESE INITIATIVES?

A small group of professionals, public servants, media and management professionals, carers, social workers, educationists and academics from Brisbane, called the Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practice.

These are practitioners of Strengths based philosophies and they volunteer in the community. Positive people, promoting inward looking, human values and resilience through powerful low cost but meaningful initiatives in people change and hope building.  Same people who brought the first Global Strengths Based Strategies Conference in 2006- India; Coping and Resilience in 2009 - Dubrovnik, Croatia and have announced the Re –Greening of Our Lives- Sarawak 2010. We hope you will be involved.

Either to express your interest or to ask for a detailed methodology of this conference, in the first instance write to the Manager of the Conference: Chris Montgomery chrismontgomery@optushome.com.au

or to the President of the Brisbane Institute of Strengths Dr Venkat Pulla dr.venkat.pulla@gmail.com