Transcript

TEDxBrisbane 2011 - Jean Madden - A good night sleep

[Music] the housing affordability crisis among other factors has pushed the number of people living on the streets to dire levels but far from accepting the situation one inspirational Brisbane woman decided to help in a very practical way homelessness is a problem many of us see but feel can't be fixed but young mom Jean Madden was determined to make a difference Jean was volunteering to do community work when she came up with the idea to develop Street swags the street swag is made out of a high density foam mattress in a super lightweight 8 oz waterproof canvas the sheet or blanket comes over the top of you so that you are safe from the elements let's say it then rolls down into itself to become a backpack or over the shoulder bag and importantly it doesn't look like beding yeah that's the way that's the way that's the best thing see real Compact and you can hide it for the guys to be able to have these that keep them safe dry warm and to be able to keep them with them is is a brilliant concept is just it's just the best idea I've come across you've only got to look around here and see the guys if they everybody want know last time we met you actually made me a cup of coffee and it was very lovely of you so I'm very I was watching a documentary on homelessness which really highlighted the detrimental effects that sleeping rough has on the body physically and mentally it's such a fast downhill spiral and so taxing on the organs and you can imagine yourself how hard it is not being able to get a good night's sleep so I spoke to my husband about it and we decided we would do something about it so it was the Monday morning that I woke up and just had this overwhelming sense of determination that I was going to do this and my husband and I said even if we have to sell the car this is what we're going to do Jean designed a prototype but lacking the sewing skills she needed some help from her mom each night I would jump into bed and have a feeling an overwhelming sense that I had to thank God for my cozy warm bed and then Jean rang me and said Mom I want to make swags for the homeless and I said yes sure that's fine because I knew um that you know God Was preparing me for it and luckily Jean and her mom also have a little help these days we were approached by um a gentleman from um um Woodford Correctional uh Center uh who wanted to put the project to the board um and asked them if the prisoners could start making the swag so Jan and I went out there um from then on they start started making them meeting Jean and the volunteers is an inspiration and it shows what can happen when a community pulls together a couple afternoons a week here at school at nudi we uh roll up about 20 25 swags and we put a blanket inside and hand them out to the people around Australia people who I meet who are using the street swag are just so incredibly grateful grateful that someone cares grateful that you know this I ionic swaggy they can relate to and it gives them a sense of confidence purpose dignity all these things that are so important that so many of us take for granted just a great story all around that one now if you want to find out more about Jean Street swag ID you can log on to her website street swag.org and we'll be back after this thanks Kim thanks everyone thank you for having me oh Cy again uh thank you for having me uh since then um I think I've had two kids since then but we've also been V very busy in other ways um we now have three prisons that se for us we also run two work for the doll programs up in the territory where they sew the swags for their own Community who are sleeping rough and we've betted as you heard 20,000 th people across Australia oh yeah give me another thank um I guess what I wanted to share with you um is what I thought might be helpful for you is um my insights and learning um as being I guess a Pioneer in Australia for social entrepreneurship and there's not many of us so um I'm I'm really sorry that you can't ask questions uh I've told not allowed but um uh perhaps I'll still be around after and um if anyone wants to speak to me they can I um had just finished a masters in theology I specialized in ecofeminist theology which was doesn't everyone come on everyone needs a masters of theology in ecofeminist theology um took me a whole Masters to work out what that was but basically um it's the same mindset that oppresses both women and the Earth and um the and the Earth and and women are are so well associated with each other that they're inextricably linked and um when I was teaching some of this stuff U because um I have been a teacher um up until recently I had kids quoting Dan Brown in assignments and and whilst it is a fictional story it is based on some good uh research and I guess um a lot of that has to do with Eco feminism just so I've given you some kind of scaffolding there um oh that's the teacher in me isn't it for me the Earth is like a ball of plasticine if we keep pinching it up every time we pinch it up somewhere it goes down and if we keep doing this pretty soon that ball of plasticine isn't going to run smoothly if we keep pulling it out of kilter it's not going to roll as it should so for me it's about smoothing taking care of that damage that is closest to you is someone going to give me a clap there I like to that uh so what we do is about looking after your own family your own Community because no one is going to look after your family and your community except you I believe you're all here today because you feel passionately about doing that and so I've call my speech all you need is courage because that's all I had and determination absolute determination for me we just wanted to get those people in Brisbane a swag who needed one for Christmas so I just decided to do it and um I guess one of my biggest learnings or or my biggest learning has been not what AIC need annually and all of those kind of things but it has been that when you're doing good work for the right reasons whatever is that higher good for you whether you call it karma God that primordial energy the secret if you're an Oprah fan whatever you want to call it when you're doing I call it God so let me call it God okay but you can call it anything you want to call it because it's real and it exist EXs positive energy whatever you want to call it I call it God but probably my understanding is extremely different to yours and depends on your age probably as well when you're doing God's work it's God's work you're just the helper and like any good boss God takes care of it I learned that at first and and of course I'm Catholic so that's how I'm couching it in that um culture that has been my upbringing mom used to say oh what a coincidence what a coincidence just the right people would turn up at the right time and after a while she started calling them God cences and after a while we just got totally used to it and it continues to happen we don't have any government funding what we do is we look after the people who get turned away from emergency accommodation every night I was at a conference late last year and a f a fellow from the Australian Bureau of Statistics stood up and was telling us his latest data because you know he's so excited about his latest data interesting thing is I've never ever seen it anywhere again but what he said at the conference was that over that past year so last year all the sap funded accommodation which is all the emergency accommodation in Australia last year they bted 105,000 people great I know from working in the industry industry terrible thing to say isn't it but it is that you can be on a waiting list for 3 years 10 years to get that emergency accommodation you need to be top of the pops emergency family with young children and when you do finally get it on average it's between 3 days to two weeks that stay will be so bear that in mind he then went on to say that on any one night they can accommodate or they only can accommodate 19% of that figure so that means there's only about or less than 20,000 beds for homeless people in Australia so we know that plenty of those people who go looking for it don't get it of those that went looking for it there was 105,000 who got it can you start to work out how many people actually get turned away from emergency accommodation each night and that was last year that was pre floods and Cyclones this year the majority of our street swags have gone to flood and Cyclone victims in Queensland who lost their homes during the floods and Cyclones because of that they missed rental payments they're now on that special Blacklist and we'll never get back on that rental cycle again just the other day just Tuesday I was with uh one of our directors who had just been out to a caravan Park and I won't say the suburb it's about 10 minutes from here you can work it out if you really want to there were eight there are eight families sleeping in a drain waiting to get into that Caravan Park they're now sleeping in Street swags my point is that this is extremely real but extremely hidden these families can't get sent link because they don't have an address they will never get ready reged anywhere as being homeless because there is a very real understanding that they will have their children taken off them and put into foster care these are good families mothers with their children who are trying desperately just to get enough bus money to get their kids to school each day hoping that they can save up enough to go into a real estate agency and say look I've got all this money money can you please let me rent somewhere the amount of homeless women and families that I see that's the majority of people that this goes to because there's no funding for these people there's no other way of keeping these people alive at the moment these young mothers who are pregnant and so excited about having their babies they won't be able to take their babies home with them the hospitals don't allow it whilst I don't want to see any children living on the street I completely agree with that these are good Mothers they haven't done anything wrong other than their company was having cutbacks so my message is all you need is courage and I think there comes a point where and I was teaching studies of religion at the time where you talk the talk and quite frankly I got a bit bored with it so I went out and walked the walk there has to be a time when you go out and you do what it is that you're here about what it is that you pride yourself on how you build your identity there comes a point where if you don't go and do it you are a hypocrite I'm sorry but that's the truth and what you need in that is courage and if you say you don't have it or you can't do it it's a cop out there's one thing that I want you to do for me though to help Street swags on your way out please take a poster and put it up somewhere for me for our biggest fundraiser ever that's on in four weeks time at the upper Brook at the Brookfield showgrounds because we don't have any government funding particularly after their floods and Cyclones we have to totally keep being creative on how we raise our funds so we uh just launching an album this month it's a Christmas album uh with some brilliant artists Katie Nunan Troy cadile Tommy Emanuel Lee kigan Casey Chambers a whole raft of aists and this concert in four weeks is the launch event for that there about half of the artists of the album will be at this concert if you can put that up for me that would be much appreciated one of the artists Rob black actually recorded a song for us written for us which encapsulates our message of taking care of your own Community I'd like you all to pull out your iPhones those of you who aren't already texting on it and actually go to iTunes and download that song for a140 might be $1 60 I don't know I already had it and and and my iPhone my my smartphone is is um so smart it actually left me um but that's okay cuz I won um a telra noia award earlier in the week so um I asked them for a phone um I I am just about out of time thank you so much for listening today all you need is courage