Tag: systems change

WTF is agency, and why does the community sector make it so hard to join in?

The Hon. Kate Washington Minister for Families and Communities with students from St Brigid’s Primary School.

Spend an hour in a community sector meeting and you’ll hear about agency, lived experience, co-design, holding space and building capacity. Everyone around the table nods. I’ve nodded along too. Many of the people the sector works for would reach for a dictionary.

The sector’s promise is nothing about us without us. Yet we often talk about people in words they wouldn’t use themselves.

What even is agency?

Agency means having a say in what happens to you, and being able to do something about it.

Some other words we use, in everyday language.

  • Lived experience: knowing it first-hand
  • Co-design: designing it with the people who’ll use it
  • Holding space: giving people room to speak safely
  • Building capacity: helping people do more themselves
  • Place-based: suited to this town
  • Theory of change: our plan for making a difference
  • Systems change: fixing the rules
  • Mutual aid: neighbours helping neighbours

What words would you add?

The skills behind the words

Leading a community organisation comes down to four skills: curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication. In my eight decades I’ve met only a few people who have all four. I believe they can be taught.

Where could we start?

School seems the obvious place. Children are curious, and what they learn in the classroom grows the adults they become

Teachers would do the teaching, so training them comes first.

The resources and the training are already here. Action4Agriculture has resources that teach curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and communication, the same skills I teach the kids I work with. They’re available on request. Josh Farr runs the training. Through Campus Consultancy he has delivered more than 1,600 leadership programs with over 40 universities, reaching more than 100,000 students and staff. He  trains teachers too.

I’ve seen Josh in action. In 2023 he led the student workshops for Action4Agriculture’s Young Environmental Champions program, working with students from ten schools across the Hunter and Hawkesbury. The share of students confident they could do something to improve their community rose from 57% to 80%.

And the kids delivered. St Brigid’s Primary School cut its landfill by three quarters.

You can read the full report here and the case study here

Our case study calls it an “Ecosystem of Expertise”. We wrote it for government in the langage government use. In everyday language, a lot of good people helped some kids do something great. Both versions are true. The skill is knowing your audience and speaking their language.

So when we’re talking with our communities, why aren’t we using language everyone understands

What do you think?

What would change if the people we work with chose the words we use?

A ten-year-old with these four skills could explain agency better than any strategy document.

 

 

Déjà Vu Is Getting Expensive.

Last night six women from six decades stood up and told stories about the older women who shaped them.

The format was thoughtful. The decades spoke to one another. The diversity on stage reflected the diversity in the room. The stories were strong. Entertaining. Moving. Generous. The audience listened.

We have become very good at this.

Across the country there are TEDx talks, Ignite nights, storytelling salons, leadership breakfasts, panels, keynotes, lightning talks, lived-experience spotlights. Five to ten minutes. A tight narrative arc. A personal story. A moment of recognition. Applause.

We have perfected the short-form epiphany.

 A well-told story shifts something inside a room. It connects strangers. It honours experience. It reminds people they are part of something larger.

Last night did all of that.

YES a well-told story can move a room. The question is whether it moves anything beyond it.

That was the question that followed me out the door – where does this go?

We have become fluent in describing the problem. We gather and name what is broken. We articulate the gaps. We platform lived experience. We elevate voice.

Then everyone disperses.

Across the country there are organisations devoted to women’s leadership, mentoring, storytelling, social change. Capable people run them. They apply to the same limited funding pools. They build parallel programs. They host adjacent conversations.

What I see far less often is a serious mapping of who is already doing what. A decision to strengthen an existing framework rather than create another one alongside it. A willingness to consolidate instead of duplicate.

Do we really think we are the first to recognise this pattern? Do we imagine history disguises its repetitions so completely that each generation encounters them as new?

I spend my time recording the lives of women in their eighties and nineties. They recognise repetition quickly. They have watched enthusiasm surge and fade. They have seen institutions splinter and reassemble. They have lived through periods when cooperation was survival. They spent decades holding families and communities together.

They want to see something built that gives them confidence their lived experience is valued

The operating system is what determines whether insight moves anywhere.

Here is what that operating system looks like.

Governance — who is accountable to whom, and for what.
Coordination — who is already doing this work, and how efforts align.
Funding architecture — whether we are duplicating grant applications instead of pooling bids.
Infrastructure — shared platforms, shared administration, shared databases, shared back-end support.
Decision pathways — how stories influence policy, practice, or program design.
Succession and continuity — what lasts beyond one charismatic founder or one funding cycle.

If intergenerational storytelling is to carry weight beyond an evening, it has to shape how we build, how we fund, how we collaborate.

Otherwise we are collecting wisdom and leaving it where we found it.

The gap is turning insight into action.