Welcome to the family!

by Gina Olivieri, Grassroots Engagement Manager RESULTS Australia

On Sunday, August 31 2014, I welcomed a brand new addition to the RESULTS family. Not a baby, but a brand new group of enthusiastic advocates – RESULTS Melbourne!

Starting a new group is always an exciting and challenging process of networking, promoting, on-boarding, inviting, organising, rehearsing and preparing. It takes a lot of work to get a group of people together in the same place, at the same time, to talk to them about their role in ending extreme poverty.

Then you have to convince them to say yes to writing to their political representatives, and putting their passion for ending poverty out into public view by writing letters to the editor of their newspapers.

Not always an easy sell, believe it or not.

I am always in awe of the people who come along to a group launch event, perhaps after only hearing about RESULTS in passing – arriving with an understanding of the problem of poverty then putting their hand up to be part of the solution.

It takes a lot of guts to be a RESULTS group member. You really are signing up to ‘put yourself out there’ and challenge your comfort zone. Talking to members of parliament is not something many people choose to do with their spare time.

But it is what’s necessary to bring about the kind of changes we’re after; to create the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty, and to empower individuals to have breakthroughs in exercising their personal and political power.

The next RESULTS group to be launched will be RESULTS Perth – October 2014. If you are interested in joining this group or any other please contact info@results.org.au