Leadership Matters

Andrew Forrest, the mining magnate from Western Australia, Alan Carpenter, the former Western Australian Premier and myself spoke to a small group of resource executives in Perth last week.

Andrew is very passionate man (you don't get to be the wealthiest man in Australia without passion) but what I didn't know about him was the passion that he has for indigenous Australians and their needs. He talked to the mining executives about how they can help by employing them and then mentoring them once they were in the job. He talked about taking the indigenous Australians from "Welfare to Well Being", It was this statement that made me sit up.

I was listening with intent up to that point and then I grabbed onto that statement and thought about our kids in Thailand. I thought that our kids aren't starting from a point of "Welfare" because there isn't such a program in place. We are infact their first and only source of income.

After Andrew finished speaking it was my turn to speak with the group and about three quarters of the way through my presentation I told Andrew and the other delegates how we at Hands had gone into the resource industry as well, by purchasing 14,000 rubber plants. He saw the funny side of it and probably doesn't consider us a real threat! But I guess a man who's personal wealth was reported in The Australian on Friday the 21st of November, to have gone from $13 Billion to $1 Billion can either laugh or cry, really he can dowhatever he wants!

What is important for us though at Hands, is committing long term to the projects we have in place and at no time previously has it been more important, because what is happening in Thailand now is that we are seeing what I call the second wave of victims. And for these kids there is no welfare system to rely upon.

So what is this second wave of victims all about? After the tsunami there were foreign aid agencies and NGO's who came into Thailand and provided assistance in many different forms. Some of it was once off and some of it was ongoing.

Let me tell you about one such program though that wasn't sustained and the impact it has had. After the tsunami there were 2000 children in the Khao Lak region who were left without one or both of their parents. Some of these kids were placed with local Thai families. The trouble was many of the Thai's in this region had lost their source of income and therefore could not afford to feed and house these kids. Not to fear, the NGO's and aid agencies made a commitment that if they took in the kids they would fund them.

Well guess what has happened? A couple of years on and this funding no longer exists. So what does this mean? There is now a second wave of victims who previously thought they had a home, but for the second time in their short lives they are finding themselves without a home once again. Why? Because the families who took them in on the provision of aid are no longer able to care for them since the aid has dried up.

Having been in the charity space now for a couple of years and viewing things very differently since I have been, I see it is a lot whole easier to raise money for kids standing in front of a ruined building in the aftermath of a crisis than it is almost four years on.

But you know what, the needs of the kids aren't overcome just because we forget. Their parents haven't come back - they are dead, very few of them have permanent homes and their life struggles really have just begun. Is the picture for them so much rosier now than it was almost four years ago? I don't think so.

So our commitment to these kids is to be there long term. It is to ensure they have the start in life every child deserves. We are going to fund their early years of development, we are going to see that they turn up to school in uniforms just like the rest of the kids and we are going to ensure that their choices around further education are not restricted because of a lack of funding.

There are plenty of people in the marketplace right now who are way better qualified than I am to comment on the current financial situation. Ralph Norris the CEO of CBA, described the situation the other night as a "financial tsunami" after hearing me speak and tied the lessons that we learnt back to what is facing those in the financial sector right now.

Listening to either Andrew Forrest or Ralph Norris speak and then reflect on the story I shared, it is evident that what is required either in times of crisis or long term sustainable growth is a committed leadership team who understand that long term sustainable growth is just that, long term! A long term commitment is part of leadership matters.