A broken scooter highlights a need for intervention

I have been known to work long hours, and it is not uncommon for me to catch the midnight train home and arrive at a parking lot that is empty save my lone scooter.

I figured it was only a matter of time before it happened. A few weeks ago I walked down to the train station parking lot to see my Honda Scoopy lying on its side with a smashed console.  The sight defined my next hour and a half spent working with train station attendants and police, giving information in exchange for advice about insurance and calling a mechanic.

Through the reporting process, people kept emphasizing how angry I must be, how they had video footage and would catch the offenders, put the perpetrators in jail, and how I could extract money from them for compensation.

I respect their need to be offended on my behalf, but I do not share their offence.  I do not mean to de-emphasise the need for personal responsibility and accountability for actions, but I look at the offenders and wonder if they ever had a chance.

Personal karma?

When I was around 13, I used to break into cars left in parking lots, put them in neutral and push them into the road. My friends went out and collected hood ornaments off of parked cars. We blew up mailboxes and made construction sites our playgrounds.

Why did we do it? We were bored, angry, disillusioned, living for ourselves, caring nothing for others. I was wrong, and if I got caught, I had it coming to me.

But I didn’t get caught. I got a free pass. Through various machinations of life, I was shipped to a relative in Canada and had the opportunity for a re-boot. A few years later, I joined the Navy and I grew up.

If that had not happened, who knows where I might have ended up. But it did happen, and my life is what it is.

A complex issue

My feelings towards the destruction of my scooter are similar to how I felt about the floods that went through my house. I was not angry at the water, nor did I feel like there was some higher authority causing the destruction to my home. It just was, and you deal with it.

This is how I see the complex socio-economic situation that produces disengagement with young people.  We live in a culture that promotes celebration of individual success through reality TV and celebrity worship. This aspirational agenda is pushed onto a populous that is born with seemingly insurmountable barriers for attaining those opportunities.  They are born into a paradox; they are told by external media that they are the most important person in the world with unlimited potential but by those closest to them they are not valued and they have limited means to realise that potential.

From 2011 statistics, almost a third (32.1%) of the 177,232-person population of Ipswich is in the lowest socio-economic quintile and over 60% is in the bottom two quintiles.  This is an increasingly younger population with a greater representation of couples with kids and single-parent families. By comparison, in the city of Brisbane only 40 minutes drive away, over 64% of the population is in the top two quintiles.

The Ipswich population is less educated, with over a third of those aged 15 or over not finishing grade 10 (compared to 29% of all of Queensland). Less than half the population (49%) have post-high school education, compared to 54.2% for the rest of the state.

The conditions are not so much from a lack of jobs, but in the nature of opportunities available. Current unemployment is 5.4%, lower than the state-wide 5.8%. Yet those jobs are largely represented in the lower-earning potential manufacturing industry and non-professional and managerial roles.

Statistics such as those above are not to highlight the negative but to demonstrate the potential for the positive. It is a potential seen be those such as Mayor Paul Pisasale who’s vision continues to transform the city. Paul is an advocate for both personal change as well as successfully attracting new business to the region with 18 new businesses opening in the area each week.  Having had brief encounters with Pisasale when I was with the Environmental Protection Agency and when I became an Australian citizen, my impression is that of a man who realises change through personal intervention and action. 

The need for intervention

A challenge with statistics is that they can mask the people behind them. Statistics can also overwhelm and numb to the point of paralysis. I find many who are making a real difference in the world do not see wider statistics due to being so focused on the immediate need.

A friend of mine spends his Tuesdays in the local mall simply being a friend to those who need to know someone cares. I work with a program that helps school chaplains deliver a program that teaches values to at-risk youth. Catalyst is a local church with several community initiatives, including an Ipswich Debt Centre offering financial advice. I have become aware of Teach for Australia, a program that embeds specialist teachers in schools in disadvantaged areas.

Conversations I have with people in each of these programs are focused on the people they are helping, the day to day interventions at the personal level that are making the change.

I recently had an airport conversation with the CEO of a 200 employee organisation that runs 70 different programs to support those in rural areas who need opportunities. Two common themes came out of our discussion.  The first was an emphasis on the values of the CEO, his being a strong sense of compassion which runs through the culture of the organisation. The second was the need for intervention at a personal level with the people they serve.

The CEO reiterated my first thoughts when I saw my scooter. Personal intervention is necessary to alter the path predicted by nameless statistics.  This intervention is made sustainable by the framework of policy and programs, and awareness for these programs can be raised by charity events such as St Vinnies CEO Sleepout.

The picture of my broken speedometer is a healthy reminder of those who intervened in my own life and to ask the question of what can I do to make a difference for others.  If you have your own broken scooter story, feel free to intervene in the comments below.