Perth Summit [Part 3]

1.5 hours into my flight back to Brisbane, Woody Allen film playing and I'm just not really in the mood for his clever observations on relationships or living in an evolving western society. Another flight perhaps. It was another inspiring day, though much shorter than yesterday obviously.

Woke up, packed, blah blah and made it to the action center. We had a presentation from Dan, the Amnesty International Australia youth coordinator, it's his job to make sure that whilst we continue being creative and imaginative about our events to make sure we remain on message from an Amnesty perspective. It's great if we can get a lot of people interested, but if people don't sign the petitions, write letters or even find out to get further involved then our events won't have had the impact we were aiming for.

That's very important to remember, we may have some excellent art and performances but if that doesn't in turn inspire people to get involved in human rights then it will have been for nought. Oh by the way, we've had our second application from an artist. Two artists on board now! It's coming along.

Next we had two more intensive one on one sessions, for me it was to work out the publicity side and also the budgeting/scheduling. Going to have to be a lot more organized when I get back to Brisbane.

We then heard from Tim from Youth Tree, he was the guy we went to hear last night speak about his new organization whose idea was to inspire people to help each other in a creative way. A very inspiring guy, only in his twenties and he just works his arse off to make his dreams reality. But he spoke to us about how to build a happy, functional team and how to get people interested in ARTillery.

After some delicious sushi lunch we each had to prepare a 5 minute pitch outlining our event, but using our personal narrative that we'd come up with yesterday to explain why we got involved. I was nervous, I've discussed my depression in great depth in this journal and to a few close friends and family, those that wanted to know. But never to a group of peers that barely knew me.

I spoke about how I never really cared about much, not even myself. That there was a general lack of self-love and a hopelessness towards the world. But then I saw how this depression affected people close to me and even though I couldn't understand why they cared, I didn't want to hurt them.

So I learned through a lot of hard work the feeling of self-worth and how it made me think about all the other people out there going through the same thing. I thought that I'd like to directly help as many people as possible and if I couldn't do that then I at least wanted to make sure that people around the world could live in a place where they didn't have to worry about external pressures whilst they got the help they needed.

Young people are often ignored, a lot of people are for that matter. But Amnesty is not one of the groups doing the ignoring, they do things, they get tangible results and make a real change in the world. That is undeniable. I want these people to know that some people will listen to them and hat with hard work we can make their lives better. That's why I do what I do. It was actually really emotional for me to say all that to them and I was holding back tears, I wasn't expecting to have that strong a reaction... I'd like to get a copy of that video, it was recorded. They might be comfortable with it being distributed, but I was very happy with what I said. I need to work on it, because I have the feeling that it won't be the last time I use that speech. Everyone else's were equally moving, it really gives you that boost when you remember why you're in this...

I think I'll end it here, it's about 3 hours until we land I believe. Probably won't nap; but you never know. I love my life. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Thanks for reading.

Andy Scott