Perth Summit [Part Two]

So hard to muster the enthusiasm to write another entry when I could just as easily go to bed. It's a bit late, but still Saturday. Although not in Brisbane. It's confusing me a bit actually. The flight here took 3 hours and the flight back takes 7 hours, the real time is somewhere in between. I'm a bit sad that I'll have to leave tomorrow, I know I'll keep in touch with people and will be keeping track on how their events go. But chances are we may never meet again. :(

Well unless we do some traveling, I definitely want to keep in touch though. It feels like a school camp that's coming to an end. Anyways enough of that, time to summarize all the workshops. Yay you say? I'll bet!

Well after a much needed breakfast we had a video conference with Ed from Sydney who is Amnesty Australia's media person. He trained us to make media releases and how to give an interview. A bit nerve wracking but we all got the hang of it.

Next we heard from Laura who was the person we did drama games with yesterday. Today she gave an inspiring presentation on arts and activism. Then we had a couple of one on one meetings with some of the national team so they could make sure we're all on track and not in need of serious help. I think everyone is okay.

After hearing everyone's events it got me thinking about extra stuff we could do in Brisbane. So what if they had more time to prepare, we worked hard and caught up basically. I think we have the potential to make something bigger and I already know what I'd like to do. But I better discuss it with Carmen and Teri first. Heh.

We then met with Paul from a group called Oak Space and he specialized in developing your personal message, in this particular case 'how did you begin to care about human rights?' he talked about how everyone in the room obviously had a moment where they went from apathy to suddenly caring.

Obviously mine was when I overcame my depression and started to realize my self worth, it then made we realize the same worth in everyone else and I couldn't bare to see any one of those people suffer unjustly. In a nutshell that's pretty much it. It's kind of awkward to talk about in a way, not that I'm ashamed or anything.

It's just hard to bring up in a conversation where you're not specifically talking about depression I find. Still I'm going to develop that story because I'll be telling it at the opening night of our exhibition and hopefully it will inspire someone to think about their own worth.

Yeah, that was it I think... Oh yeah we had a meeting earlier on with Alex, a designer, who met with us to work on some national branding and marketing ideas. We ended up with some sweet concepts.

It didn't end there, around 6pm we went along to a presentation where this group pretty much launched their new NGO. It was quite exciting, young people using arts and technology to try and make human rights and kindness go viral. Very interesting concept.

We then went out for dinner and just laughed it up for the next few hours. Tomorrow we do it again until about 3pm or so and then it's off to the plane. I'll have plenty of time to write whilst on the plane though so it'll be a bit easier.

I'm not doing a summary yet even though this is my last night. I feel like I've made some lasting friendships. And even though this event is huge compared to a lot of things I've done, it feels like just the beginning.

Andy Scott