Welcome back to Changemaker Q& A, everyone. I am so excited to be back and to be bringing back the podcast. We have had a little bit of a hiatus. I was living in India last year, doing all of my field work for my PhD. I am now in the final year of my PhD, just writing up my thesis. For those of you who maybe don’t follow me personally you can follow me at Tiana J on Instagram or on YouTube.
I am researching in the field of communication and social change. Essentially my research is looking at how development organizations can harness the power of information and communication technologies to better empower women. With a focus on women in rural India, a big part of my research has actually kind of been taking a step back from that more applied aspect of the research and really just understanding what empowerment is.
From a largely ontological or philosophical standpoint. So I have really been trying to understand what empowerment is given that it is such a subjective experience and essentially trying to find those commonalities or. Those variables and the mechanisms that tend to all be present in every woman’s experience of empowerment.
And, you know, I might be a little bit biased, but I think my research findings have been pretty profound. I’m really looking forward to Submitting my thesis in the new year, finalizing all of those kinds of formalities of my candidature, and then really focusing on disseminating my research presenting at some overseas conferences next year.
I’m building a whole bunch of resources and tools to essentially make a lot of the frameworks that I used in my research available and accessible to anybody. And also just looking at ways to kind of make my research findings. It’s accessible to those working in the development space and beyond the development space because you know, academia has a tendency to.
put up a lot of barriers when it comes to accessing research and information. And as much as I can appreciate the role of the Academy in the, I guess, building of knowledge and the dissemination of knowledge in a very formal sense, I do also want to be wary of the fact that some of the organizations and the people that are probably going to benefit most from this research are going to be those outside of the academy.
So that’s what I’ve been focusing on. I am also the founder of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, if you are new here. And I started HCN back in 2019, I think. It kind of evolved very naturally and organically. From a bunch of different workshops and things that I was doing. I was getting asked to organize workshops and speak in a lot of primary and secondary schools, mainly in Brisbane, where I am based.
And I was kind of. starting from scratch each time and I was building these workshops based on what the particular students had been learning about. And that became very kind of tedious and time consuming, particularly because I wasn’t getting financially compensated for any of these workshops. So I basically sat down.
on the floor of my walk in wardrobe. I was living in this big old Queenslander share house at the time and I had like the master bedroom and it had like a walk in wardrobe that had been converted from like an old sunroom. So it was essentially just this room that was like all window and one lot of shelving and wardrobe.
And I did not have anywhere near enough clothes to fill it. So I essentially used it as an office space. And so I was sitting down on the carpet and I had all these colorful post it notes and pieces of paper. And I was in the final year of my undergraduate degree at the time. And I was like, okay, how can I condense everything that I’ve learned about social change?
How can I kind of develop a framework or something that I can base all of these workshops and teachings upon? And kind of then use that as the basis to adapt all of these workshops to, and that was kind of how I developed our kind of key framework for social change that we teach at the Humanitarian Changemakers Network.
It is essentially what our first.
It’s a four part framework based on a study called Gender at Work that was published in 2015. And it essentially looks at two different variables that I’m going to determine the types or categories of social change that can be brought about when we are addressing a particular issue and in the next episode I will be going into that framework in a little bit more detail, but if you do want to learn more about that framework, we have a Bye.
Free online course that essentially walks you through that framework. And you can also get a free digital copy of our handbook, the change maker and you at our website, humanitarian change makers. net. It is kind of one of the easiest, almost fundamental ways to develop a theory of change, which is kind of now in 2023, essentially what a lot of our work is based upon here at the humanitarian change makers network.
So, we have a range of different impact initiatives that we run, but most of the work is essentially all about presenting people with different ways to develop a theory of change, which is an essential tool for any change maker in their change making toolkit. So, we start with our Social Change 101, our basic framework for social change.
We have systems thinking as an essential tool for your changemaking toolkit. And from there understanding systems thinking allows you to develop a systems theory of change. We work and collaborate with different organizations and groups to help them develop all sorts of different types of theories of change.
Some of them are based on things like human centered design. storytelling and story making. So that is essentially what the work we do at HCN is. It’s all about teaching you different theories of change. And the reason we focus on this is because this is kind of that fundamental or foundational stuff that people need to be able to understand and apply.
To any issue that you are tackling in the social change space, whether you are working in the human rights space, the environmental sustainability space, whether you are in the humanitarian or development space whatever it might be, whatever issue you might be tackling, these frameworks and tools can be used to.
develop a really solid theory of change and to go about and actually bring about that type of change. So we tend to not focus exclusively on single issues. We do collaborate with organizations that are kind of focused on specific issues or areas of interest, but the work we do can be applied to any area.
And that’s something that I’m very passionate about and very proud of. I have a background that kind of spans over a decade in the social change space. I’ve volunteered with and worked for and freelanced for a whole range of different organizations. And the one thing that I didn’t particularly like was that a lot of the education and training in these organizations tended to be very organization focused.
So it was all about strengthening, strengthening these particular organizations. And, you know, while that is incredibly important, it’s important to develop the skills and capacities of the people. Within these organizations, because these people are the ones that are driving change. You know, what happens if somebody decides to go and work or volunteer for another organization?
A lot of these education and training tended to be very specific to the issues they were dealing with, or the campaigns they were working on, or the programs they were running. And so what I want to do with HCN is kind of… offer that broad foundational knowledge that anybody, whether you are working at the grassroots level, whether you are working in an executive role for a large organization, these frameworks are useful to you and you can apply them to any issue.
We are incredibly people focused, you know, I truly believe that At the end of the day, people are what drives change, whether it is legislative change, or whether it is changing social norms whether it is changing a law or a policy whatever it might be, all of these changes that we see are actually driven by people, and that’s why I think that prioritizing people, people’s well being, people’s skills, people’s knowledge is really one of the best ways to Thank you.
Be better at driving social change. So that’s a little bit about me and the work that we do at HCN. For those of you who have been around for a while, you would probably know that we have had two seasons of the Changemaker Q& A podcast and we are bringing it back for a new season. I have essentially gone and looked back at all of the other episodes and I’ve.
So I’ve kept all of the changemaker chats that we did, so all of the interviews that we did with other changemakers or experts in the field, and they are still available, but with a lot of the kind of solo episodes that I did, or the Q& A episodes, I want to kind of redo them. For the first two seasons of the podcast, I would sit down and record an episode.
I had a lot of notes. I would sometimes script an entire episode because I was really worried that I would forget an important point or miss something. And You know, this might just be me being very critical, but I look back on them and I’m just not particularly happy with the content or the quality of them.
So I am going to be re answering those questions. And the good thing about that is I feel like I have gained so much more knowledge and you know, a much more nuanced perspective about a lot of these things. Just from time, I guess, working in the social change space, but also from things like my PhD.
And so I want to come back. I want to address them. I want to be a little bit better. I want the conversations in the podcast to kind of be a little bit more personal. I was really worried about bringing too much of my own experience into the podcast initially because I I am kind of the face of the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, I am the founder, but I never really wanted it to be about me, I always wanted it to be something Like outside of me.
And I thought that in order for that to happen, I would need to be like a very objective, kind of be like a faceless voice. And, you know, I’ve come to realize that that’s not the best approach. I think that sharing my own personal stories and my own experiences can really benefit people and help them understand these things that I’m talking about.
And. That’s why I guess I want to kind of come in and answer these questions that you guys asked again from a more nuanced perspective, sharing my own experience. Now, I will be going back and answering the questions that we answered in the first seasons of the podcast, beginning with our top rated episodes.
So the most popular ones are the ones that I’ll be addressing first. If you have. Any questions that you would like answered in the podcast, you can head to our website, humanitarianchangemakers. net forward slash podcast, and embedded on that page is a form where you can ask your question you can tick a box to say whether you want the question asked anonymously, if you want to ask it anonymously, you And you can also pop in your address and any questions that we answer on the pod, we will be sending some goodies to the people who ask the questions.
So for example Anyone who lives in Australia or internationally, we will be sending some of our Changemaker Co. patches. These are iron on or sew on patches that we designed that you can essentially use to upcycle some of your existing clothes. We, you know, don’t want to encourage people to necessarily buy new clothes, but we love this idea of the clothes that you wear being able to spread a message.
And so, you can sew these onto… You know, your favorite t shirt. I have mine sewn on, like, all of my denim shorts, denim jackets tote bags, whatever it might be. So, we are able to send these ones internationally. If you are based in Australia, we have some other goodies that we might be able to surprise you with.
We have one more. Batch of our Safeguard Women safety keys that we released last year, that will be coming out soon. So I’m keen to give away some safety keys to listeners. We have hard copies of our handbooks. We have some of our upcycled tees. So if you do put your address. in with your question and just leave your email address so we can contact you.
We are more than willing to give away some goodies to our listeners because without you guys asking us these questions, there would be no questions for me to answer. And, you know, I could kind of sit down and brainstorm a bunch podcast, but.
You know, I’m coming at from the perspective of somebody who has 10 years of experience working in this space and you might be somebody who is relatively new to the world of social change and the questions that you want answered might not necessarily be things that I even think are important to answer.
So we want to hear from you guys. We want to answer your questions and you can look forward to A fortnightly episode, to begin with. I would love to bring the podcast back weekly, but I don’t want to overcommit just yet. I am doing this solo again, so Lachlan, our incredible podcast producer, has Now gone out into the real world and he has got a job as a journalist working for the ABC.
You can still follow Lachlan on Instagram if you want to keep up with him. He was a pivotal part of the podcast and I really couldn’t have done it without him before. At the moment we just don’t have the funding to pay a podcast producer, but if anybody is listening and you are interested in helping out with either production or maybe marketing or anything like that, helping us get leads for interviews and things like that.
Definitely reach out to us and send us an email. It’s team at humanitarian changemakers. net. I can’t pay anybody at the moment, but like we always try to do with our team members, we will bring people on, on a volunteer basis, and then we will start compensating you depending on how much funding we have until we can work our way up to a fair wage for the work that you’re doing.
So that’s kind of how things have worked in the past. That’s how things are gonna keep working.
So with all of that said, I would love to answer a little question in this episode. I want to answer a question that I answered back in Season 1, and I think my answer is going to be completely different, but it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. a lot lately. And the question was what piece of advice would you give somebody who is just starting out in the social change space?
I love this question and the piece of advice I would give now is probably the same advice somebody gave me about 10 years ago when I was 17 and I went to my first international conference. It was in Hong Kong. It was the theme was youth’s determination to transform the world. I had been invited because of some of the work that I had done for my Queen’s Guide Award working with UNICEF and raising funds for UNICEF and stuff like that.
I… Really didn’t know what to expect when I went to this conference, but it, you know, changed my life as cliche as that sounds. And I think it all boils down to one particular speaker in one particular workshop. And the piece of advice they gave us is that. If you want to change the world, you have to experience it first.
And this speaker went on to share about all of the places that they had traveled, all of the things that the education travel gave them, enabled them to do. And I wrote that down in my notebook and I took it very literally. I came back home and I was like, okay, if I want to change the world, I have to experience it first.
I basically made it my mission to. travel as much as I could. While I was studying, I set myself a goal to travel to 50 countries by the time I turned 25. I am now 27 and I have been to 49 countries. I’ve been sitting on 49 since Just before COVID, I would have gone to my 50th country, but obviously with COVID and the travel restrictions, I haven’t gone to a new country since then, but it was kind of just an arbitrary goal anyway.
I set that goal because I thought it was audacious enough for me to kind of not let it slide by and, you know, become a little bit complacent, but it wasn’t so big that it seemed like it was completely unachievable and I recognize that this idea of telling people to travel is one that comes with a lot of privilege.
Even just being Australian and having access to an Australian passport makes travel significantly more accessible and easy for me. But I want to talk about, I think, what… This speaker probably meant when they said experience the world and why I think travel is one of the best ways to do this, but not necessarily the best.
Now, I am obsessed with the concept of story. I am doing my PhD in communication, social change, and I’ve come to realize that everything we do in the world is shaped by story and the narratives that we tell ourselves. From the reasons we get up in the morning and choose to eat something for breakfast, to the job that we go and work, and the music that we listen to, to the causes that we care about, it’s all based on story.
And the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, about why we do something, about why we should care about something. And you know, this might sound a little bit broad and a little bit like woo, but You know, a very tangible example would be, I have been vegan for now 10 years, and, you know, every time I open my fridge, every time I go out to eat, I essentially am vegan because of the story that I tell myself about who I am, what my ethics are what it means to be ethical in terms of animal rights and animal welfare.
It’s… It’s all based on this perception or this understanding of the world that I have very much, you know, grounded in logic and reason, but it’s still a story that I tell myself in the same way that, you know, I take my dog for a walk every day because of the story that I tell myself about what it means to be a responsible pet owner.
These are all stories that we tell ourselves. The reason that we support a particular cause or not is because of the story that we will tell ourselves about why the world is the way that it is, why it should be the way that we think it should be. And… Our story is shaped by lots of things. Our story is shaped by our values and our cultural upbringing.
It’s shaped by, you know, all of these different things, but it’s mainly shaped by our lived experience. Our lived experience is the thing that shapes our story and the lived experience. of a person of color living in rural Australia who might be a member of the LGBTQ community is going to be vastly different to my own as a cis gender, straight passing white woman living in an urban area.
And it’s because of our lived experience. Now, there are certain aspects of our lived experience that we can’t change, right? I can’t change the fact that I have grown up in a society where as a white person, I have far more privileged relative to others, but we can do things to gain experiences that can change our story and shape the way.
We see the world and the stories we tell ourselves about the world. And I think one of the best ways to get this sort of lived experience is to travel, whether that’s traveling overseas, whether that’s, you know, traveling around your country, whether that is traveling in the sense of becoming a bit of like an explorer within your own city.
Or just kind of developing that like traveler’s mindset where you’re always willing to try new things and learn new things. I think that is one of the best ways to gain any kind of lived experience of something that you may not have experienced firsthand. And so when we think of traveling, you know, what are we doing?
We’re throwing ourselves into the deep end. We’re experiencing a vastly different culture, maybe a culture from a different. Religious background, maybe a different language, you know, different foods, different worldviews, different ways of seeing things, different experiences, different standards of living all of these different things and we get that kind of experience of it.
When we actually like go there and we can immerse ourselves in it. And that is a really great way, I think, to start telling ourselves richer stories about who we are to start telling stories about how the world is and how it should be that are a lot more nuanced and. You know, if we can’t physically go somewhere and experience these things, there are still other ways you can experience the world.
Another great one I think is like watching documentaries or reading memoirs is a really great way to kind of sort of experience somebody else’s story. Probably not as good as actually like talking to that kind of person and having a conversation with someone, but. Still a really great way, I think, to kind of to hear from someone else’s lived experience.
I think that, you know, you can read more books, you can just learn about things in so many different ways. You don’t have to necessarily travel. Although I will say that I think if you have the opportunity to travel, that is probably one of the best ways to kind of gain that experience. And. I honestly think that that is one of the most important things that you can do when you are starting out in the social change space.
And you might think, well, why? Why is, you know, gaining this experience of the world so much more important than getting out there and taking action and doing things? And this is something that I have had to grapple with a lot. I have been really I guess, influenced by the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. And also Gandhi. And I guess kind of like the foundation of their teachings, bearing in mind that they do come from quite spiritual backgrounds or perspectives, is this idea that love should form the basis of everything that we’re doing. And this includes, like, loving the enemy You know, not having hate for the people that might be oppressing a particular group.
And that’s really hard to do. It’s really hard to take any action or form a perspective on something that you know is… Right. And something that you might be able to argue is objectively right without having hate for the other party, the alternative view. And I think that what it comes down to is this idea of understanding and.
When you are able to tap into that lived experience of other people, you’re able to not just, I guess, learn from and kind of identify what it is they believe or the stories that they’re telling themselves. But I think when you can really connect at like a very, I guess you might even call it like a spiritual level, it allows you to understand.
The stories of others and the stories that they are basing their actions on. And when you truly understand you can’t have hate in your heart and. If you listen to this and that doesn’t sit with you, that is okay because I felt really uncomfortable with that idea or that concept for quite a long time. I, you know, I would read Martin Luther King’s work and I would just think like, how could he have, you know, love towards the enemy and all of this stuff.
But now I understand that when you… can truly understand other people and connect with them through that understanding. You can never truly hate them, and if you never truly hate them, you can work from a place of love, and a place where we’re not constantly fighting the oppressor, or we’re not constantly fighting those who are on the other side of an issue to us.
It’s more about coming together and co creating. a world or an outcome that works for everyone. And I think that in order to get to that point, it really begins with this idea of just experiencing, building on your lived experience and the lived experience of others so that you can see the world from a more nuanced perspective.
It’s very easy for us to jump into an issue and start taking action by signing petitions, joining a protest you know, donating to a cause. And all of these things are important, but I think that if you’re not doing that kind of fundamental work in order to not just take action towards the cause that you’re passionate about, but really understand the issue holistically, then we are always just going to be holding ourselves back.
We’re never going to really create the world that we want because we’re… Going to continually perpetuate this idea of us versus them, and all of this stuff that we think we are opposed to as changemakers when really this is the stuff that we are going to perpetuate if we aren’t working from a place of mutual understanding and compassion for everyone.
So That is why I would suggest just gaining experience of the world, traveling you know, immersing yourself in the stories of other people, doing whatever it can so that you can start to tell yourself richer stories of how the world is, how the world works, how it could work, how you think it should work.
And yeah, that all begins with just experiencing the world. So I hope you guys enjoyed That little rant, I’ve answered this question before, like I said, but I think I had a little bit more of a nuanced reason as to why I think travel or experiencing the world is one of the first things people should do when engaging in the social change space.
If you have. Any questions you would like me to answer, then please head to humanitarianchangemakers.net/podcast and you can ask your questions there. We will be sending away goodies to any questions that get answered on the podcast and I will see you guys very soon in our next episode, which is all about what do we do now that Australia has voted no in the referendum.
