Sharks and eating ants

My mother taught me a very important lesson in my life and that was that you ALWAYS have something to give to someone, no matter how you feel emotionally, what your current situation is or where you are financially.

I have created guidelines I like to follow in my life and in summary: I give a certain amount of my time, talents, income and efforts to causes I care about. That is Heather Grace's giving framework.

Along came Ernst Van Der Poll, founder of Tawasul, and made me rethink my entire belief structure on giving when he said the following: "I want the majority of my time to be giving, while I work on the side."

I love meeting people who really are an example of the better person you can be, so let me tell you how this all came about.
In October 2009, I attended TEDx Dubai with Nick, my boss. We had been talking about getting involved in creating video content for charitable causes in 2010. While we watched a host of inspirational speakers, TWO really made an impact on me. They were Masarat Daud and her 8 day academy and Ernst from Tawasul.
Perhaps both touched me as they involve children, and I really miss my youth back in South Africa! So we approached them both to make videos of their work. (I will talk about Masarat in another blog).

We had a few kick off meetings with Ernst and he explained that Tawasul is all about creating a platform to re-connect kids with the environment, so we decided to film his "Week Without Walls Program" and Tom Savage kindly offered to film the workshops for teenagers while I led the interviews and we watched as these teens learnt about everything from sharks and turtles to creating environmental awareness via social media platforms in the classroom; Then we followed their confined water training and finally the very exciting scuba dive in Dibba.
This whole experience inspired me to write a blog about Ernst and to find out what motivates him and where he gets his constant stream of social entrepreneurship ideas from. It almost seems as if there someone chasing him to give back and I was interested to find out why his life is all about helping others.

He tells me "Time is a commodity and I tell these kids everyday that you are going to wake up and suddenly be in your 40's and I want you to ask yourself if you have done everything you can to maximise each day you have?"

Of course I was curious to know when giving became part of his life, and he shares an experience when he was 14 and he volunteered at Marfogo Farm in Mozambique, an orphanage for war orphans. Some of the volunteers were playing with the kids one afternoon and one of the ladies who managed the place was watching them and she started to weep. They ran to her and asked what they did wrong and she told them that one of the little girls that they were playing with saw both her parents shot in front of her. This little girl had apparently been emotionless since she arrived and while she was playing games with the outreach team, she smiled for the first time.
"You can change someone's life by doing something as simple as bringing a smile to someone who has experienced a lot of pain.” Sobbing movie stuff I tell you! Sniff.

His enthusiasm about the environment and making a difference in people's lives is clearly what he lives for. From Tawasul in Dubai to starting an art and education initiative for the impoverished fishing community of Sea Gypsies in Mabul to teaching Palestinian child amputees to dive, Ernst just seems to seek opportunities to make a difference wherever he goes.

When I asked him why he chooses to work mainly with kids? His answer "Kids have wild imaginations, they are full of adventure and they will even eat ants!" he laughs and tells an animated story about a kid who ate ants at a talent show.

I am not intimidated by intense people and some may be thrown by his fast paced way of thinking and the way he constantly generates ideas about changing the world. The difference between him and most people I meet, is that he is DOING something with his ideas. I think Ernst is one of the most grounded social entrepreneurs I have met and that is probably because he is literally in touch with nature in almost all that he does. The other common trait I find in people who give is the word PASSION. He describes passion as “the long distance fuel that is going to change the world” and he certainly has enough passion to keep hundreds of people inspired.

Ernst - you really are a powerhouse. VAVAVOOM.

Here is a short clip of Ernst with Khalil, a 16 year old double amputee from Palestine during the disabled divers instructor's training in Dubai on 27 June 2010.

I must have a fix or I get the bends

Just the other day I was interviewing someone for a blog for my company Alchemy Films and ended up having one of the most interesting conversations I have had in a long time.
Dennie Pasion is a hair & make up artist with Bareface in Dubai and we recently did a beauty shoot with her. I wanted to have a chat to her about what inspires her creativity and ended up having dinner and a long chat with her at a restaurant in JBH hotel. The football was obviously on, but we had tea and chatted about life, God and all things spiritual with not even a single glance to the match on the 4 screens that surrounded us. My kinda gal!

Dennie lives in a world of shapes, colours and sounds and if I had to describe her, it's as if a 14 year old girl inside is swinging gently on a swing in a beautiful white dress while the sun beams through the trees and dances off her face. She describes things using words such as "tumble, gurgle, scratch, shy, unaffected, capture, ooze, sensual and magic".

Coming from a person who loves sounds, shapes, smells and colours - it's refreshing to sit with another person for a few hours while they describe their experiences in a language that you can understand.

Dennie is involved in all sorts of creative projects including Petcha Kutcha - this is a creative platform which means "The sound of conversation" in Japanese. The image above comes from her Fame Virus series shown at the event.

When I asked her what keeps her inspired in the concrete jungle, she tells me about how she loves to surround herself with young people. "The truth is when people reach a certain age they start conforming and then I move away and find myself surrounded by a newer, younger group of friends, until THEY start to conform!". She continues to tell me that "a series of life experiences encapsulated in a single word, hairstyle, lip colour and she is a compelled addict that must have a creative fix or she gets the bends."

"It's up to YOU to make things interesting, create your OWN magic."

We end off talking about the griffin dragons surrounding London, her experience of being blessed in a church and why she gives beggars money in London just to hear them say "God Bless you darling" because she appreciates receiving the blessing from them so much!

Oh how I love interesting and refreshing people.

Narcissism equates to becoming a literary artist

I'm sure this happens to all narcissists at some point.

They run out of ideas to blog about. Ideas about themselves, of course.

Now I've been doing some online research about free writing courses. This is to improve my personal writing skills and also for the writing I do for work newsletters and social media updates. I found a site that offers free writing courses from various universities.

I poured through the course descriptions online and found this interesting write up:
"But an equally vital purpose of this particular creative writing course is to offer the student a space in which to explore the mysteries of his or her self. In fact, it is largely by means of self-exploration and self-reflection and self-expression that the best literary art is produced. And for at least the next several months, this is exactly how I would like you to view yourself: as a literary artist."

So they have a nice way of saying that narcissistic blogging is not just ok, but it's GOOD for the creation of a flourishing creative artist. But as I said I have run out of my own stories, so I am probably not destined to be a literary artist, I am probably just going to have to be happy with a blog with 7 followers.

So what to write about? My original aim when I started this blog was NOT to talk about work, I wanted to write a personal blog that was completely and absolutely random and unique to me and had nothing to do with work. Having said that I have met so many incredible people via my work that my next few blogs are going to be about either tremendously inspiring or downright creative and interesting individuals I have had the pleasure of meeting........

I live to meet people that move me and I really can't be bothered with randoms. I know it's very unchristian and all, as you should love your neighbors, but I don't know my neighbors. All I know is I can hear them through the walls in the villa next door, but I do however know some really interesting people that I like and that I want to blog about because they inspire me to want to be a better person and to be more creative.

For a start, why don't you subscribe to my Youth Care Centre Blog - the next few write ups will be about the inspirational volunteers who sacrifice so much of their time to help change the lives of the youth in Durban.

Toodaloo