Kim was awarded the Catherine McAuley Alumnae Award for 2020, this is part of her acceptance speech. We hope this serves as a reminder that often in the finding of one's purpose, one will naturally lose things too. It’s an honour to be here today and accept the Catherine McAuley Alumnae award, what a privilege to have so many of my wonderful friends from the class of 1985 here too, we had so many laughs over our six years, on the way in I joked with Sister Maria (Lawton) that it was nice to be back and not be in trouble, she quickly quipped it was nice to not have to dob me in! Needless to say I was a...
Photo Credit: @india_stibilj x the syndicate A recent study conducted by the US Center for Disease Control, which compared suicide rates among occupations, confirmed a strong correlation between working in the fashion industry and developing mental illnesses (we see you nodding fashion friends). The fashion industry has a problem. But what we also need to talk about is the strong relationship between fashion consumption and mental health. All markets are two sides of the same coin, so let’s go beyond the business side for a moment and start talking how you, the consumer, can create greater wellbeing through your relationship with fashion.Our fashion habits may well be a mirror to our thoughts. I read a simple statement recently, ‘a resilient...
'The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering'. Ben OkriI want to preface this with an opening line we use in our presentations, nothing I'm about to say is scientifically proven, instead, I'm drawing on my own experiences as someone who struggled with the darkness, came through and now devotes much time and purpose to not living 'untruths'. I don't always succeed but thats why we called our social enterprise The Possibility Project (not the 'Positivity' project) because a purposeful existence is one where there are many paths home, not just a happy one. The focus of our social enterprise is mindset...
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was written nearly 70 years ago and at its core is the recognition that when we value the inherent dignity (from Latin; dignitas: worthiness) of every human we will create a world of freedom, justice and peace. Little wonder it is the most translated document on earth, its message holding universal value. But whilst the tenets of the Declaration are paramount to a life worth living, they also reflect a thinking that has reached its limit. When the Declaration was written it was enshrined in a belief that a person's...
