It was a huge honour to deliver a graduant speech on behalf of my Leadership New Zealand 2014 class. Here is what I had to say to after the most amazing year with the most amazing people! I am sitting in an antique styled hotel room in Boulder, Colorado. The walls are papered in delicate … Continue reading
First-time Parenthood?
Guest Blog by Jolie Wills Okay, this may sound a little odd, but it strikes me that working in recovery is a lot like first-time parenthood. How so? When you embark on the journey you know it will be one of the most meaningful and valuable roles you will play, but also one of the … Continue reading
Purpose and pot plants
Guest Blog by Jolie Wills This last week I have been visiting tsunami affected communities in the Tohoku region in Japan and speaking with fabulous people walking alongside those impacted. Many of those I have talked with are supporting the communities of Fukushima where regions are still uninhabitable due to the nuclear radiation leak with … Continue reading
Rejuvenating eucalypts – an analogy for human recovery
Guest Blog by Jolie Wills No reading and research can ever prepare you for the real life and long term personal ramifications of a disaster. I have researched, read and heard a great deal about the communities impacted by the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. However, on my visit to Kinglake, Toolangi and Strathewen this … Continue reading
Neurons of the Heart – the Art of Being Connected
A neuron is an excitable cell that processes and transmits information through electrical and chemical signals. These signals between neurons occur via synapses, specialized connections with other cells. I heard the other day that there are 40,000 neurons in your heart and 100 million neurons in your gut [almost the size of a cat’s brain … Continue reading
My Valentine’s Day Disaster
It is a valentine’s day like no other and it starts early. I look out the jeep window, a little bleary eyed from the 4am start. Tacloban flashes past as we drive to a relief distribution. We slow a little as we come to a roundabout – it looks a little odd, kind of lumpy … Continue reading
Cosmic Engineering
To be honest my former self would have thought that an ‘inspiring engineer’ was an oxymoron. It would seem that the universe has intervened on the behalf of the engineering profession to set me straight. You could call it a feat of ‘cosmic engineering’. Whether sitting on a bus winding around rural Taiwan or random … Continue reading
Bump, Spark, and Swim Upstream
It ‘s raining outside and I can see the venue from my hotel window. I make a dash for it – I find my boot is leaking and the green man at the crossing seems to be off on a coffee break. I wait, willing him to return as my hair sticks to my head and water … Continue reading
How will the greater Christchurch earthquake experience influence kids in 50 years time?
How will our stories, images, achitecture and recovery vision influence future generations? I was raised in Napier fifty years after the 1931 earthquake ‘that wiped Napier town off the map’ and have looked back at my own formative years to try and gain insights into this question. I remember being on school camp, sitting with … Continue reading
Dignity
Measurement is the assignment of numbers to objects or events and it is a global obsession. I see people with little dinky things that measure how many steps they take and websites where the whole world can give a random person a ‘hot or not’ score out of 10! We have never been able to … Continue reading
Elizabeth McNaughton 