Observations and Reflections from Mentoring Training - 27 March 2010

Volunteers in the Making Trax Mentoring Program span the breadth of the twentieth century’s generational ranges. Assuming my guess of age is somewhat accurate; we come from the Greatest Generation (G.I. Generation)/Silent Generation, Baby Boomers Generation, Generation X and Generation Y (Generation, List of Generations in the Western World, 2010).

Notwithstanding age, each mentor brings a vast wealth of life, work and personal experience to the program. From the stories shared in the training session, I hear inner selves that identify with words such as orphan, recovered alcoholic, Koori youth worker/integration aide, personal assistant/holistic counsellor, and employment officer. I believe that each mentor yearns to assist the Making Trax mentees to find their purpose in life and reach their own potential.

Our generations often find contemporary youth to be unprecedented, alien and a generation who ‘want everything now’. Perhaps this is due to being a part of the digital age from conception? Adolescence brings many changes to a child’s world, and if youth are unable to transform in a safe, secure and non-threatening environment, risk taking behaviour increases.

A challenge youth face is to engage in positive risk taking in real time in the real world. It could be said that this is due to the overly cautious society that we live in; public liability insurance and corporate risk management strategies often give youth programs a constraining framework to operate within.

The notion of the village has changed; youth are generally not as connected to elders and therefore basic life skills and manual, traditional ways of doing everyday jobs are being lost. Disadvantaged youth are therefore unable to learn the basic life skills like cooking, washing clothes, mowing the lawns, or sewing because their parents, for one reason or another, may not have the capacity to teach them. “Can communities and society be strong if our children and young people are not?” (Stanley, 2003).

Fortunately, in East Gippsland, youth have been given a chance to engage with adults who care about the collective. Youth participating in the Making Trax Program are able to learn valuable life skills; identify their purpose in life; build their self-esteem; take risks in a safe environment; and grow, learn, develop and have fun.

Works Cited
Generation, List of Generations in the Western World. (2010, March 24). Retrieved March 27, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation#Western_world

Stanley, F. (2003, April 8). Communities in Control Speeches, It takes a village to raise a child. Retrieved March 27, 2010, from Our Community: http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/files/fiona_stanley_speech.pdf

“Can communities and society be strong if our children and young people are not?”. (Fiona Stanley, 2003)

I am fortunate to be a part of a mentoring program for Making Trax, which is an Innovation Fund project funded by Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR).  

Making Trax is a highly innovative and exciting project aimed at young men aged 16-25 who face barriers to successful participation in the community as a result of childhood trauma, violence, abuse and neglect.

The program uses a very interactive and holistic approach, and works on the premise that long term change for people with significant barriers to work and participation will only be achieved with a long term approach that looks at the whole person, rather than just focusing on developing work skills.

Through group activities, mentoring and individual counselling the program aims to assist these young men to:

• Identify the impact of these experiences
• Explore such impact on their subsequent ability to successfully participate in personal relationships, parenting and employment
• Identify and address learned behaviours which have arisen as a result of their life experiences, and develop strategies to overcome the negative impact of such behaviours
• Provide skilled and committed mature male program leaders, mentors and role models to positively assist them to address the barriers caused by such life experiences
• Build the capacity of each individual to successfully participate in the community, and to participate in future program development

The project will be delivered initially at three Community College Victoria (CCV) member sites in Yarra Junction, Bairnsdale and Benalla over a twelve month period, and subject to positive evaluation and approval from DEEWR, rolled out to a further two CCV member sites for the following twelve months.

The project will develop and trial a model which can potentially be offered to Job Services Australia providers for their Stream 4 clients.

Inspired by The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer's

It doesn’t interest me if you believe in God/Goddess/Spirit/The Great Mystery… I want to know YOUR truth.

It doesn’t interest me if you believe in marriage or think that God wants every sentient being to be married… I want to know that you could risk anything (materially, physically or emotionally) for the greater good of humanity.

It doesn’t interest me to make small talk because we have to conform to societal beliefs… I want to share passionate conversations about taboo topics such as politics, religion, sex, drugs, racism, human rights aberrations. 

It doesn’t interest me that you stay in a job because you have to… I want to be surrounded by colleagues who love what they do for a living and are dedicated to the organisation.

It doesn’t interest me to be embroiled in petty situations that are unclearly resolved… I want to create a working environment that is expansive and aligned to my heartfelt truths in life – empowering others to awaken their inner truth.

It doesn’t interest me how downtrodden you have been… I want to know your hero’s journey and how you created a healing outcome for yourself.

Rest Easy

After finishing The Call by Oriah Mountain Dreamer this weekend just gone, this is an amazingly synchronistic thought from thoughtfortoday.co.uk!

Rest does not come with sleeping, it comes with waking. This is both an insight and an action of enlightenment. When we are enlightened we realise that real rest is possible only when we become free of illusion and we no longer struggle against life. Illusion is the idea that people should be, and do, what we want them to. The truth is, all is as it should be, despite appearances, or our perceptions of others to the contrary. This means you can be easy on yourself, easy with others and easy with the world around you. Easiness is a virtue, an attractive one at that. It is much more influential than force. So quit forcing, end the struggling and...relax!

Harmony Day @ NuArt

Harmony Day @ NuArt - inclusive creativity: a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning!

The Desert section... and my snake of transformation and healing. After taking this shot I drew desert flowers to the left and right of the snake. Uluru is featured in the Desert section... I traced around my son and another child's hands on the Uluru image.

Grey - became a brick wall to symbolise the city and the urban environment. My son and I helped paint the background to this section. My son also decided to paint outside the lines, which became bricks tearing away from the wall. A metaphor for my son's personality - a 3yr old boy who is a unique, spirited child... definitely not another brick in the wall. Green - the natural landscape. Blue - the ocean. Red - the desert.

86,400 Seconds

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. Every evening whatever part of the balance you fail to use during the day is deleted. What would you do? Draw out every penny and use it well, of course!!! Each of us has such a bank - Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Invest the day's deposits well, or the loss is yours. How could you bring the most contentment, happiness and benefit to yourself and others? The clock is running.

Harmony Day - Sunday 21 March 2010

This Sunday (21 March 2010) is Harmony Day. Harmony Day celebrates the cohesive and inclusive nature of our nation and promotes the benefits of cultural diversity. The continuing message of Harmony Day is ‘Everyone Belongs’. It's about community participation, inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for everyone.

The 2010 theme is ‘Express Yourself’. And this inspired the owners of Nu Art at the Stables (Bairnsdale) to take the opportunity to support creativity and diversity in the community by organising the conception of a large pavement artwork open to all to participate in.

Children and adults are invited to help create a community pavement artwork to celebrate cultural diversity.

2010 Harmony Day event details:

Location: Nu Art at the Stables – 6 Service Street Bairnsdale
Date: Sunday 21 March 2010
Time: 10am-4pm

Self-Soveringty

from thoughtfortoday.co.uk



Subservience to my negativity is a very precarious existence as I can never be sure how well I will handle a difficult situation. With practice it is possible to create appreciative and compassionate thoughts; then I no longer need to indulge in resentment, bitterness or dislike. Training myself to react calmly and wisely offers enormouse dividends. Let me talk to myself silently with love and encouragement, balanced with firmness, and like the wise old sovereigns of fairy stories, let me rule the inner kingdom of my mind with benevolence.

Gentleness

Non-violence is a very deep philosophy. Not only does it require me to harm no one physically, but also to avoid harming anyone's self-respect. Such an ethic requires tremendous awareness and sensitvity. When I have learned to be gentle with myself, I can be the same with others.

Divine communication, communion, darshan... Or connection?

We connect with source/infinite wisdom/god/goddess through prayer, divine communication, holy communion, darshan, dharma, karma, meditation, physical activity, or retreat.  Lately my mind has been consumed by everyday life and I have spent little time in divine communication with my soul and the infinite energy that I look to for guidance. 
It is easy to be absorbed by daily earth plane life and devote little time to the one thing that matters - your soul.  Activities like work, household chores, playing the role of mother/father/brother/sister/friend can often leave you feeling consumed and disillusioned, so much so that you walk through daily life unconscious to the miracles that surround you.

Today, I devoted thirty minutes of time to my physical needs and ran on a treadmill at my local gym.  As I moved through each metre and kilometre; I focused on breathing, a collective of cockatoos collaborating on a sporting field in the distance, the gum trees in the foreground of the view and Bob Marley playing on my iPod! 

I felt that this form of moving meditation allowed me to simply be in the moment, because when you're running there's no other place to be.  Lose yourself for just a minute and your gait or breath falls out of synch with the flow and you end up feeling breathless.  Life is a moving meditation.  "In prayer you communicate with God, in meditation God communicates with you."  www.thoughtfortoday.co.uk

Om Namah Shivaya!

Kind Thoughts

Over the past weekend, I have spent a large amount of quality time with a gentleman whom lives on a Buddhist dharma centre.  Conversations oscillated between water skiing, overseas travels, Buddhism, karma, hedonistic adventures and parenting.

This evening, I received a meditation from thoughtfortoday.co.uk which sums up the way we should interact with one another and I thought I would share on my blog.  What have  you done for another sentient being today?  I gave my Buddhist friend some fresh, free range eggs from our chickens...

Great souls take advantage of every moment and every opportunity to give happiness to others through kindness in their thoughts; such souls are willing to overlook weaknesses and mistakes and have the desire to help everyone reach their potential.

Astro ponderings

Half an hour from now, the literary consumption of my astrological "Personal Portrait" by Robert Pelletier will be complete.  After reading my son's Youth Portrait today, I am intrigued and eager to hear of my astrological dharma.

Watch this space!

Inner Beauty

"Wow...that's beautiful!" Is either a cry or a thought when faced with the mountain sunset, a spectacular view or a well formed man or woman. But where is the beauty, where is the appreciation of beauty, where is the ability to discern beauty? It is within our own consciousness. For the essence of who and what we are is beauty itself. The essence of beauty is not found in the body, a face or a mountain - they only stir the essence of beauty within our own spirit. And that beauty is not only something we taste within ourselves, but it emerges in our character as virtue, and in our life as care. For what is virtue, but love in action. The next time you say, "That's beautiful!" know that you speak of yourself, and it is you who are beautiful. Always were, always will be.