Hello there.
Today's episode of Separate Bathrooms contains discussions of suicide and mental ill health. If this raises any issues for you, support is available through the following services. Call Lifeline on thirteen eleven fourteen or visit lifeline dot org dot AU.
Call beyond Blue on thirteen hundred two two four six three six, or visit beyond blue dot org dot au forward slash forums.
We experienced the death of another family friend just a couple of months.
Ago, and it's just like, why is this still happening.
We lose more young people to suicide than by any other cause in our country.
It's not okay, Hello, and welcome to Separate Bathrooms. We would like to acknowledge the Gadigel people of the Urination, the traditional custodiums of this land, and pay our respects to the elders past and present. My name's Ali Daddo.
I'm cam Dado.
How are you.
I'm really well good actually, thank you for asking.
Sure. Gosh, well, we have an amazing couple. I know, we always have amazing couple.
We do.
We have a really special couple coming in today and they're going to be talking about a subject that is very very close to my heart. I became an ambassador to a charity called Rais, which serves an industry leading youth mentoring charity dedicated to providing support for teenagers in high schools right across Australia.
Yes, you're all.
Over the place bus shelters video for Rais dot org dot au. I'm getting messages from people all around the country talking about your involvement with I.
Did a letter to my mentor because Raise supports kids by supplying them with a mentor for six months, and they asked me, can you talk about your mentor? And I got to speak about my grandfather and write a letter as if I was writing a letter to him, and that was or. I could barely get through that letter. I did actually.
Cry during it as you're reading it out.
Yeah, because of how meaningful he is to me. As mentors are, you know, you can remember that one person from as far back as memory goes, people can go, I remember when she did this, that teacher, that footy coach, the librarian, the neighbor next door. There's always pretty much always a moment in a child's life that I can remember, that moment of kindness or that moment of support or.
Wisdom founders Vicky and Leon Condon are our guests today. Yes, Vicky has a background in counseling and knowledge of growing research. In the power of mentoring, she made a plan to support young people by providing them with a caring, trusted, independent mentor not a parent, not a family member, someone who shows up on a regular basis, just for them.
That's right. And Leon, Vicki's husband, is look he's an experienced executive with a solid track record of business achievement in blue chip corporate and successful startups. And Leon also actually holds a degree in engineering. But he is also and very proudly the chairman of Rays. He brings such a wealth of expertise to raise and he's a key partner in the success of the organization since its inception.
Really, yeah, we're going to find out more about Rais. Vicky and Leon are doing incredible work and it all started in their home office raising money through movie nights if you can believe, and they've been able to support more than thirteen five hundred people through their programs. Vicky was awarded an Order of Australia, thoroughly deserved. Indeed, they are also married and happily. Let's discuss that they were so married and happily married. Let's discover more about Rais
dot Org dot Au and Vicki and Leon. Vicky and Leon Condon. Welcome to separate bathrooms. We will talk about rays ours obviously involved intimately with you.
Guys.
We are a relationship podcast, so you have to tell us your love story.
Can we remember? Do you remember how you met?
How long ago? Was it not that long ago? Kids? Come on, it was a.
Long time ago. I was nineteen.
There's two answers to this camp. I met Vick at least a year earlier and fell in love.
And you don't remember that. Vicky, there's a story. We've met at a floor.
We both worked for the same organization. So we worked at Honeywell and I came over from Adlaida grew up in Adelaide, and I come over for a big fancy ball here in Sydney, and On was there.
And the only way I know that.
He did see me is because he can tell you the dress I was wearing, which is true.
But he didn't come and talk to me, so.
He just stared at you.
We didn't actually speak.
She was wearing this purple sort of taff her with Kyli and I really tightly permed heir.
Gave that away.
Yeah.
So then we met when I actually moved over from Adelaide and started working for Honeywell here and so we worked for the same company, and that's where we met.
Seriously, that was my version.
He was stalking systems control systems.
Wait, so so you're at the same party and you think that you were with her the whole night, and I think he was stalking behind behind curtains. And did you remember her for a whole year? Was she on your mind a whole year?
Patient? Not normally one of my qualities.
And did you know that she was going to move to.
Orchestrated?
You orchestrated it.
You got a control system out. And then.
I was a secretary and Leon was working for the same guy, and so we ended up working for the same department. Yeah, he'll tell you that we met in the copy photocopy room the second.
Time, or were you photocoph sitting on the coffee machine?
Don't go there.
That's the sort of thing we did in the eighties.
We didn't have exactly and we didn't have you know, screens and things, so if we had to sit on the screen in order to send a love message?
Did we did we have to do it?
Well, we didn't work in business, we didn't act still photocopy machine. But I did at school and that was the thing that used to happen at school with.
Yeah, boys school very much girls photo copy there genitals, Jen.
It was a sitting on it. It was a cheeky it was a cheeky fax.
Machine, definite, and your mates and still get up to it.
Well, we'd still do it if there were a photo coffee machine. I'd still give.
That's too much fun with me.
So that the second meeting for you, Leon, almost the first of Vicky. How long till you fell in love? And there was marriage?
And oh it didn't take me long once I'd actually met him. Leon was really fun and energetic, interesting.
Back in the day.
And yeah, we got together pretty quickly and we were together for about six years before we decided to get married. And the proposal was very exciting and you just couldn't say no, what.
Was the proposal? Leon? How did you orchestrate that?
Do you guys scuba on?
No, I'd love to though, that's actually on my bucket.
Lest One time in band camp.
I did one thing you can't be proud of is doing a tank in eighteen minutes hang on tank of oxygen.
Okay, how long was the tank normally tank?
Probably forty five or more.
So you're excited.
I was a little bit excited. But some heavy.
Breathing going on, yes, so that.
Says a lot.
So we're at just off burro And Bay. There's this beautiful dive called Julian Rocks. We were down about sixty feet and before we went over the side, the dive master said, have you guys ever swim with gray nurses before? VICKI had a few explete ips but about.
Gray nurse being shark the hospital at.
About sixty feet and we came through a cave which didn't have a back on it, and three gray nurse mails and sharks literally two to three feet away from our masks. I was sucking a lot of oxygen, knowing that I was about to us the dive master for his slate or white slate to write will you marry me? And then she started riding S and I couldn't work out what s. I was ready for a y but maybe an n.
I'm right sure, I didn't give it away right from the beginning.
So yeah, oh I love that least it was an s h I t take me too, shure, Yeah exactly, So amongst sharks and sixty feet below, that's a pretty good proposal.
I don't think we've ever heard one like that.
I think that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.
We've been.
We've been on mountains, we've been on bus sidings, we've been, we've been all over the place, but we've never been under the ski.
Yeah, it was pretty special.
Took six years to come up with it, though.
You didn't have the ring with you to do or I think we should talk about the ring.
You need to talk about the ring.
Now dropped the ring.
We didn't really have a ring. No, we didn't have a ring, but I had another rings. We just moved that one over onto that finger.
Yeah.
I got the best ring when we got Ali, our third child. So we then quickly had children, so two.
Boys and a girl.
Yeah, and my real engagement ring, I don't know what you called it.
Forever ring, maybe with yeah, when we.
Had Ali, our daughter, Ali, your third child. Yeah, so the ring that I went now I got yeah, great name.
Yeah, one or two one you.
And your other. One of your sons is Cameron.
Bove friend is Cameron, which is quite funny. So they are Allie and Cam.
You go look at that destined one are the chances?
And then we've got Sam who's our middle son, and Ben who's our eldest.
Are they involved in this amazing charity that you guys have set up?
Ben and Ali try to avoid it.
Really don't think Ben's on strategy.
Ben is actually my best mentor, so he'll often around the dinner table just say you know, okay, mum, how is your day? And he actually listens to my asked the right questions.
So yeah, let's.
Go back though to the beginning of raise. Can you talk about what inspired you to start it?
At Honeywell, where we both worked, I moved from being the secretary to working in HR and once we got the kids off to school, I remember thinking I really don't want to go back to corporate hours and I retrained as a counselor. So did that training and started teaching at TAFE, which I loved, and volunteered to some other organizations and found mentoring programs which really got into my blood. Like the tape course was amazing, but there were a few things with my corporate background that I
thought I'd do a little bit differently. So, if I'm being really honest with you, raise was my midlife crisis. I turned forty. I left the three kids and the dog home with Leon and took off to Byron Bay, which is obviously a very special place for us, and sat on the beach for a week and wrote a big business plan and thought I was.
Going to change the world.
Came home and I just popped the business plan away in my bottom drawer because I just thought I'd never run an organization before. I don't know how to run a charity. I'll just keep volunteering. A few months later, we experienced the death by suicide of a fourteen year old family friend, and our kids were coming up for a similar age and Leon was there when it happened, so he was working with his father and just dropping
him off after work, and that rattled us. It was awful, wasn't itly Yeah, it's.
A level of grief that you just don't want to see anyone that you care about experience to see your mother and father there. I've a really loved child, Yeah, and I I reacted by going into my cave as I do on things like that. And Vicky reacted with really positivity, just straight out saying, this is just not okay. There's not just one young person like this. This is systemic in our community, our country today. It's not okay
with the theme. And she I went to the funeral, she refused, and she went to ASSE and registered the charity.
Wow.
And you know, it's been an incredible journey with just amazing people like you guys, just leaning in and saying, hey, how can we help?
And now it's remember thinking if we could just help one young person like him at the time, that it would be worth it. And you know it's fifteen years later now.
So yeah, in the first year we had a graduation actually over there Drunker and remember so clearly standing at the back of the hall. We had something like fifty six kids or whatever in the program that year and standing at the end of the hall and these kids, you know, they're coming to the program and they're you know, their heads down, dragging their feet, they were so flat. Anxiety levels or depressions really high, maybe bullying, all sorts of things happening in their world. And at the end
of the year. They've got a graduation where they grabbed the microphone like this and they're in front of you know, I couldn't have done this a year ago. I'm in front of one hundred people and I'm just talking about, Oh, I've got a job at macas and I've got to be you know, and you subject and they're just so full of life. Enjoy one girl, let's call a Jess. She walked to the front, she grabbed the microphone. She just said, bick and I at the back of the room.
She said, I just want to say one thing. I just want to say thank you, thank you to the Foundation to raise because if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here. Yeah, and we just did a little high five, and I thought, that's the one. That's all we needed.
There's one.
Can you give us the elevator pitch of raise for our listener?
Sure?
So. We run early intervention and prevention mentoring programs in high schools right across the country. We work with the well being teams to identify which young people would benefit most from having a trained and trusted mentor to talk to every single week for six months. And you know, I guess the differentiators from our mentoring program is you
know that training. But the program's run by qualified counselors who supervise the match and look after everybody and keep them safe, and we do comprehensive evaluation so that we can prove and improve the program year on year. This year, we're in one hundred and eighty schools right across the country. We're in every state and territory apart from the Northern Territory so far, and we'll have twenty four hundred young people being matched with a raised mentor this year alone, So it's.
Come a long way.
And as Leon said, it's you know, it's all about lots of individual people right around the country who also just want to do one thing for one kid. That's the difference that you can make just you know, given hour a week to talk and listen, ask the right questions helped them get through.
And I know that there was an event the last event I went to there was it was really beautiful because I've heard from the students who've been through the program, but hearing from the mother of a child talking that was really special because I think as parents we often feel that we have to be everything to our child. And I'm sure you know I've even felt that, like, oh I want to be my child's mentor. But you know your friends who lost their child, this was from
a loving family, you know. So what's the difference between that mentor to a parent, Like, what's that defining difference?
Firstly, we have the mantra that takes a village to raise a child, and I think that's so true. And you remember you back yourself as a fourteen year old, the relationship with you have with your parents or teachers. So this to have a random, you know, a person that's not a positive role model into their lives, that's not a parent, not a teacher, not a person of authority.
When the young people with the men tea talk to us Selli about what they get out of it, they just talk about having someone to listen to me and not tell me stuff. Yeah, maybe ask a question that helps steer. And you imagine what a gift, even yourselves as adults, to have an hour week where someone is just giving it all about you, and when you've got so much going on in your world as our kids have today, as you know, fourteen year olds wish to see it this year nine, but it's typically year eight.
Now it's a big transition.
Period, fe and you can be the best parents in the world, right, like we know you can be the great greatest parents. But there is a period in adolescent development where young people just move away from mom and dad, like you're suddenly not cool anymore. And you know, it's
very uncool if you like your parents. So it's the perfect time to bring in, you know, an independent, trusted person who might be a footy coach or a teacher, or you know, someone that is separate, like Leone says, it's you know, not a counselor yeah, you know, not your parent, just someone different. I remember telling our kids, giving them advice, telling them things, you know, what I thought about what they could or should do as the mum.
But you know, often they won't listen to you. But then, you know, a couple of weeks later, the footy coach might say exactly the same thing to them and suddenly they've taken it on board.
You know, they're like, well, you know, mister.
Harrod said that I should Rara Ryan. I'm like, well, I told you that two weeks ago, but sure, you know, and that's great and that's what you need is.
We had a lot of that.
Yeah, there's a lot of research done about adolescence, isn't there that they do need to in way divorce the parents, you know, and that's part of the growth, natural growth that we haven't it's really hard for parents to let go and allow the child to find their own way. In our experience, now as our kids have gotten older, they do come back.
Yeah, yeah, I love that saying.
You know, I can't believe how much of when I was fourteen years d was, but how much by the time I turned twenty five, how much you'd learned?
Yeah, yeah, he's a good bloke now.
Mark Train everything.
Mark Twain said something like that, what an idiot my father was, and then how smart he was.
Yeah, he got over it eventually.
Yeah.
Right.
And when we grew up, there was that environment. There was you know, we're outdoors. There was a lot more a lot more sport, a lot more engagement, and so opportunities to be with your uncle or your dad's mate or whoever. Whereas now they're in the bedroom gaming, that's right, or they're on the social media, yeah, doing the latest tiktokle.
Yeah, So what do you say about that.
The thing that's probably we won't know still for decades probably, but the impact of this judgment and comparison, you know, you just see the show real. The highlights are the positive of all these people's world, in your world in comparison to theirs. For all of us now, even as adults, but as a fourteen year old, so impressionable that everyone else's world is happy and positive and they're just doing great fun things. Look how attractive they are with.
Their the photoshopped how many likes they got and I didn't get hardly any likes on this post, and that, Oh.
The world is suddenly very closed in and you know, we would never have witnessed, you know, things like nine to eleven when we were teenagers. But this current generation of young people, that's what they've grown up with. That's what's normal for them. Even von Dio Westfield, you know, they're seeing that on their feed before they're hearing about it.
That's news.
And you know, of course anxiety is so heightened when anything like that could happen just around the corner. They're just they conscious of things like that.
They've just exposed so much more so we've just completed a study the first time we've ever had a control group study and with the University of Melbourne where we've had a group of like minded young people with a raised mental and a like minded young group without a race mental and the results have just been absolutely fantastic.
Can you speak a little about those results.
Well, all the key here is that we're really be working on resilience, hope, help seeking and school engagement because what we're seeing is the levels of anxiety and depression mental illness for this generation is at a significant level, and it's having a direct connection to the attendance record, and that school engagement level is directly leading to school completion and eventually through to employment and your role in a massive contributor to community. So we can see that line of sight.
Yeah, all of.
Our key result areas are increased compared to the control group, which is really encouraging for the program. We also did an economic study of the program, so for every one dollar invested in our program, there's four dollars thirty seven in return of avoided costs from the health system. Lately, on talked about in school.
Right when you first drew up your business plan, was this part of it we're considering this type of no.
It blows me away that we've been able to do what we have done, but also, you know why we still needed We experienced the death of another family friend this year, just a couple of months ago, and it's just like, why is this still happening. We lose more young people to suicide than by any other cause in our country. You know, it's not okay, and so we
need to keep on top of it. We need to keep making sure and I think there's been a lot of work on awareness, and there's a lot of work at the crisis end of mental illness, particularly for young people, but early intervention and prevention is where we need to be investing more because if we can teach these young people right early on where to go for help, how to build resilience, how to push through these challenges that are inevitably going to come up, you know, how to
have a growth mindset, this isn't going to be like this forever, and help them get through school and find work and make sure that they have happy, healthy adulthood like we've had thirteen and a half thousand young people graduate from the program. And your question came about you know, did we ever think it was going to get to hear like? I didn't think so, And I think I think our board at the beginning, at Lea's the chairman, we're just thinking at the time of it, he's got
a nice pet project. You know, this will be fun for her fifteen years later. It's really important work that we're all doing together that's making a huge impact.
What's interesting, it's not only the mentees the young people. What's interesting with the program is the mentors and the benefit that they get out of it. Because corporate Australia or in our business life, what used to be focused like schooling is focused on academics and nap planning results. Increasingly people are recognizing what used to be called soft
skills are the power skills. You know, listening and you know you guys talk about empathy, you know, just to build those skills, those those EQ skills is what a fulfilled, happy life's all about. And we're seeing that with the mentors. They're reporting back to as well, we got more out of it than we Yes, we.
Talk about that as a ripple effect.
You know that we're able to create across the country because yes, on one hand, we're helping young people to survive adolescence. But on the other hand, we're upskilling all of these adults on how to ask the right question and listen really effectively. And so those skills they can use with other young people in their lives or you know, if they're volunteering in the community or their own kids, or in their workplaces.
Like Leone was talking about.
So lots of our mentors are university students who are studying psychology or teaching and they come to us to do placement hours so they can learn what it's like to work one on one with a young person. So there's lots of benefits for the mentors as well as the mentees.
And it's been I mean, I know this has helped my mental health and many people talk about this. You know, if you're struggling, sometimes it actually really helps to help other people and that, you know, and I think that this being a mentor would be as you say, that ripple effective. Like you see that the access and the assistance that you're giving to this team, and I mean that can only feel good for yourself. And you offer training. This is something that anyone can just go and do.
And what does that training look like for someone who wanted to be a mental Yeah, the training's fantastic and we've developed it over the years, so there's now eight modules that you can do online and they're just self paced, so you do them at your own time, your own leisure. The training is, you know, industry leading. It's fantastic.
At a cost? Do you pay for the training?
We gift it to those who volunteer with us. We don't charge our volunteers. Having said that, we are setting up a social enterprise because those skills are so valuable, and you know, corporate partners are buying those training courses from us as a social enterprise initiative so that we can start generating our own fundraising because fundraising is tough.
As an The money side of thing has just been crazy for us. After a corporate life that Vicki mentioned before, I've been working with small enterprises, stuff ups and medium sized businesses and there you spend all day trying you've got a product or a service, and you spend all money all day trying to drum up demand. Here it rays is there's just unprecedented demand where Yeah, we're really thrilled to have twenty four hundred kids in the program
this year. But it's you know, it's less than ten percent of what we want to be doing because we have that many schools coming to us and saying, hey, can we have your program? All individual students coming to us every week, multiple times a week around the kidsen table. It's like, we've got another school that needs, you know, needs a program with thirty or forty thousand dollars that we don't have. How are we going to get that?
And you need more mentors as well, don't you we need right?
Yeah, yeah, our challenge is always, you know, enough mentors and enough money, money, enough, and it'll always.
Be kids, that's always.
Yes, it's so great and that's how al you said so beautifully about when you are feeling low, to actually step away from your life, go help someone, use your skills to assist someone else does raise your confidence. And in this day where we're reading about job redundancies and jobs changing and shifting and evolving, and we're change is hard to deal with and we all have to deal with change. That's just the common denominator of the human cycle.
Things change, and it seems at the moment that we are in a state of great change, but subtle change as well.
That sneaks up on you.
You're talking about your hair color.
Oh no, that wasn't so subtle that it happened to the GFC. Do you remember that, honey, I love the way you segued into my silver hair color.
Said to me the other day, she said, there was if.
Someone put up a comparison photograph of me at twenty six and another one of me at fifty two or whatever, and now goes you look better. Now, I'm like, why she goes, because your hair's uniform. It's all gray, it's not half gray.
Well, you've got the hearth breaking going now.
You've been so yeah, we've got more, way more pepper than you do. So whereas I'm pretty salty, but as I was in mind, it's okay nothing.
I've done it to you a lot. It's so valuable.
And I want to ask you about your checks and balances with mentors because this exposure in the news and we're hearing it all the time now through church and through this and trust family staff of just mentors abusing their privilege right or their power perceived power, especially over over vulnerable kids. Can you just talk a bit about how you vet the mentors, and I think it's important.
It's a really rigid process that we've developed over the time that we've been running. We have a very comprehensive youth safety framework that our volunteers have to go through the training. As much as it's great and that you're developing skills, it's also us checking you out. What we have to do as an organization, which all of us do when we're working with young people and particularly vulnerable young people, is make sure that there are no doors
of access for pedophiles of people coming into groom. So you want them to be able to look at our website and our program and know that it's going to be very difficult for them to prey on any of our young people, So we make it really hard for them at every turn. Our program is supervised by degree qualified counselor or social worker or psychologists, so they're there the whole time while the mentee and the mentor are talking and yeah, so it's fully supervised the whole time.
It's something that we are very vigilant about. It's really important.
It's paramount. Safety is at the top of our our pillar on everything we discuss, and you know as well as the supervision of course or contact details aren't shared. There's a defined into the program, and there's separation. Often you find where in organizations where it has occurred, they've groomed through a period and then it's been after that there's been this association. So separation is key. There's lots of elements to it. Can it's it's complex, and it's a good major concern.
How has creating rays well? What has it done for your relationship? For your marriage?
You can believe.
It's interesting.
I mean I always talk about raises our fourth child. You know, we had the kids, and then bringing up kids and raising children for me, wasn't that easy? You know, you're stuck at home. I would often be quite resentful watching Lee walk out the door off to work for twelve hours, and you know, I'm their home with kids. And now that's probably reversed a little bit, like Leon's
work has different. His chairs of organizations now rather than CEOs, and I walk out now that the kids are grown up, I walk out in the morning and go off to work for ten and twelve hours. And you know, sometimes you watch me going, oh, that looks like more fun than what I'm doing, you know, so I think for us it's brought us together. It's a project that we've built on together. It is like our fourth child. Leone brings the commercial nous and the brain to our organization.
I've learned so much from him as our chairman over the fifteen years that we've been running. You know, he'll say I bring the heart. I wrote the program, but I would never have been able to expand it and scale it the way that we have without the commerciality of Lee and you know, his brain and his challenging questions that sometimes I want him to get back in his box and not tell me how to run my business. But you know, often a few weeks later I kind of think, oh shit. And he was actually right.
Into last the first time I.
Read that.
Public No one's listening.
We're in a bathroom, mate, why do you call it?
It's recorded forever. You'll be able to bring that out. So I think you've been complimentary.
No, it's definitely enrichard. It's funny. A lot of people say you never go into business with your family and friends, but if I look back over thirty five years of business, some of my closest friends have come from working together, so we launched into it together and the skills are complimentary.
I don't think they're as generous as you've said on my side, but it's really worked and certainly, you know at times, definitely I have to be reminded that you're being the chairman now, you're not to be the husband stuck with that tacky humor or pretty bit dad Jack's are always welcome though.
In the boardroom though that's not okay, that sounds like the title of a song.
Well at least it was you, VICKI. It wasn't like someone that's series.
Usually we do introduce ourselves Elia's husband and wife. Yeah, but I remember being in a minister's office in Canberra once and we forgot to and it was about halfway through and we were doing I don't know, there was something going on the weekend.
That kept surfacing through the chat.
Then they said, oh, when they worked out of you guys related and we said, oh, that makes a lot of sense of all that carrying on.
Were worried about our governance for a while.
This was a church minister, not a political minister, was a political and he was worried about that.
Now I think it's worked pretty well. Yeah really, I mean, you know it's not all rosy.
Okay, you guys have been married for how many years?
Thirty two weeks ago?
Congrasin, So how do you get through your bumps and bruises in the relationship because things changed, as I was sort of alluding to, aside from my hair color, which my wife has pointed out, how do you how.
Do you get through through the bus? Do you have any techniques, any tips for our us.
I think we're learning from you. I think it's all the things that you talk to and our parents talk to. It's it's really that communication. And before that, it's just time together. When you've got busy charity and a couple of businesses as well that pay the mortgage and three kids, the life's pretty full and to look around and say, hey, we haven't connected for a week. So it is firstly
about time and communication. It was really interesting recently we were on a just learning and not through a book, just around marriage and Richmond and just simply to recognize that communication can be on those three levels. You can have transactional rather informational. You know, when do we need to pick up the kids? And you know, what's happening on the weekend or can be Secondly, it can be around opinions. Do you have enough time to get together
that you're actually sharing each other's opinions? And thirdly level three, you know, are you actually sharing your feelings?
Yeah?
Certainly, sat back from that when holy smokes, we're having very little time together and then when we're together, we're never getting to the feelings level.
Did you, guys, did you bring that up? Did you actually talk? Do you say, hey, VI this I've just heard these three things and yeah.
It was a shock to me.
And now to joke around the dinner table, isn't it that we need to stop hanging out at level one? Let's get to level three? Let's get there quickly?
You mean third base? Well not, we're talking about sometimes.
You just need a little rub on the tummy and a good feed and then you're fi.
You can walk away for a couple of weeks and you guys go.
And we like, we like the intimate talking about how I.
Get Do you not? Do you have enough of that? You don't? Okay?
Yeah, all right, well there you go.
And this comes back to the mentoring, which is what it's all about, right, is talking and listening. So you've actually got to be brave enough to and say what you think and put it out there, like takes courage to do that. But also you've got to listen, well right, listen to what's going on and play it back and understand it and talk about the feelings as well. So yeah, you've got to be brave enough to say what you think, but also to listen to what we said.
I remember this from years ago, so when we were living in LA and the movie culture, like you go to the big movie theaters and it was a big thing, and I said, we'll go to the movie.
I don't want to go to the movies. I don't want to sit.
In the dark and watch your screen. I'd rather go out for dinner or go for a walk and have a chat to you. Yeah, And I never even considered that before. I thought, Yeah, movie date, that's.
That's you know what's romantic.
Yeah, we'll talk in the car and the way there about the movie that we're about to see, and then we'll talk about the movie on the way home that we just saw.
Transactional so level waight.
Number one, first base Yeah.
Yeah, okay, And on reflection, I think. You know, I've probably had twenty years of working too many hours in a day and coming home and vic all the kids to saying, so how was your day, Dad, and May and Sue would be because I was totally spent. Good. Yeah, and that was it. No chance of even getting through level one and two, little A three, you know it was. It's really on reflection. I don't know how we got through those bumps and ups and downs that you talk to What are we.
How many years are week thirty thirty two or is it thirty three?
This year we didn't have six years. We kind of went yeah, way too to it. So, you know, everyone has their own path.
Yeah, but they're okay, this is good. I love it when I learned stuff.
What's the overwhelming experience that your kids talk about when they've completed the program, is there is there one specific thing that they.
So A lot of what they talk about is there was this person who doesn't really know me, but was prepared to sit and listen and let me talk about all of my things and they're not even paid. You know,
that's always pretty remarkable. They kind of joke around that what we see a lot of is the confidence you know, you know, if you give a young person a mentor, you're actually giving them confidence and you're giving them connection, and so that I think is really important, the community connection, So for them to understand that there are people all around you that you can go and get help from.
To experience for a whole six months, every single week of talking to someone, having them actually listen to you means that you're much more likely to go and ask for help from someone. So that help seeking is also a really important gift because that's how we save lives. Absolutely, that's how we know that they're equipped to and get the help that they need and accept it.
I mean, we've talked a lot about this on the podcast as well. Just you know, what everyone really wants to feel at the core of ourselves is that you matter. And I think that's probably the most beautiful gift that a mentor gives, in that freness of the time that I matter enough to someone to show up every week. And I think that is a gift that you can take, you know, forever, and six months is a long time at that age specifically, you know, so part yeah, it's
going to be so interesting. You know, you're fifteen years in, but like to see where those kids, you know, in fifteen years time and another fifteen years, you know what that effects. That's exactly right, and it's interesting.
So our next piece of research will be a longitudinal study where we go back and talk to about those thirteen thousand kids about what do you remember from your mentor? And this time last year, we got a phone call from a young person who rang us and just said, oh, you know, I know we're not meant to stay in touch with our mentor, but I have some news and I really want to talk to my mentor.
You know, is there a way?
Is there a possibility that I could talk to them? And we talked him through it, and we were like, you know, and we're not sure that we could do that for you. And you know, if you could talk to your mentor, what would you like to tell them? And he just said, well, you know, in talking to Ian, his name was the mentor and talking to Ian all those years ago, when I was fourteen, I learned that I am actually really good with my hands as much as I'm a cranky kid. And I kept getting kicked
out of school and my attendance was really bad. You know, I was i'd have like eighty days absence at school. What I learned from Ian was that I could add value. And I just I'm ringing now because I actually want to tell him that I've just graduated from my carpentry apprenticeship and now i'm you know, I'm a qualified carpenter. And it's because of him, you know, And it's just amazing. You just kind of go, oh, this is cool, Like
this is what you want to do. You're planting seeds when they're really young and they flourish and grow at their own pace.
Yeah.
And it's actually a beautiful video about this mentee who's now probably mid twenties, tradey and to hear an Aussie blow talk like this and just be so vulnerable, it's just it's goal. It's changed his life material one person.
You know, that's so good. Did you pass the message on to Ian?
We couldn't help us.
I think it's an ideo and that's the part for the mentor, you know as well. If I'm talking like someone who's been made redundant and he's helped a kid in that way and then you bring him up, you know, eighteen months later and go, hey, by the way that work you did with oh mate, he's just plugged that in.
And remember you remember a mentor from your childhood, right, you think back and you go, you know, I can remember my comments teacher, I remember her name, I can remember her voice. She had really curly black hair, and she was amazing. She changed my life. I wouldn't have finished school without her. And the job that we got that I got at Honeywell was through her and her sister.
So you know, they there are people that change your life lives, and like a sliding door moment, your trajectory goes in a different path because that person cared about you and showed up for you.
What would you say to an adult that was sort of thinking about becoming a mentor? What would you What would you tell them that might convince them that it's a really good idea.
A lot of our mentors will say that that what if they don't like me? And I can tell you that our mentees love their mentors so much and it doesn't matter.
What age or stage.
You are graeously bad.
Yeah, So like we have mentors who are twenty one, you've got to be twenty one, so you've got a bit of life experience all the way through to eighty one. I remember I had a ninety year old men one time, and he was extraordinary. You know, we have lots of kids who don't have grandparents around them that they don't get to catch up with. You know, lots of women with skills, you know, to share that they might be parenting themselves and you know, got extra skills to share.
University students, corporates who give their time off work to go and actually do something in the community. It's another thing we learned from COVID is actually we don't want to just sit in an office all day and you know work. We actually want to go and connect with that community. So you will make a difference. Your mentee will like you, and please do it because we can't do it without them.
That's right.
Yeah, I'd say, Ali, congratulations. You know it's a gift. I think probably the number one reason people don't is they think they're not good enough. When I did the training, I felt I failed because you do it all this role playing and you had to do things like listening. And I found, as an autocratic CEO that I've been for thirty years, I was not going to cut it as a mentor.
You've done pretty well with your listening skills.
Though now apparently I've got a way to go.
To some days. If you learn something today, that's good.
It really is a gift. They know if they project themselves forward six months, twelve months, and they'll be looking back and going, wow, that was just amazing. You know. It's actually you know, people who give us praise for example, and even thank us for the work we do, and it's it's really strange because it's it's the other way around. It's actually quite selfish. You get so much out of it.
Just one more thing that I just love about the program as well, is that you know, obviously the mentees get incredible assistance. The mentors also you know, have fulfillment. But it helps families as well because when you've got a mentor that is also you know, being that listening year and guiding it, it creates like adult people are not so bad. Maybe I can tell my mum this, Yeah, maybe I can tell my dad how I'm feeling. Yeah,
And that is that's a powerful that's the experience. Yeah, yeah, all.
Right, we do it.
You're ready to get your clothes off and hopping the shower with us. That came maybe, Cameron, I'm sorry to take it down saving water.
Let's just talk about the shower. It's a metaphorical shower.
You can keep your clothes on and it's not taking close off sweetheart, all right, just Start's.
Funny how that changes over over the thirty years of marriage.
First question, what are you most grateful for in your relationship? The fun? Leon's brought a lot of fun to our lives.
I reckon it's the kids. The one plus one has really been way more than three. Yeah, the kids have been huge. That the organizations in the houses and everything that was building stuff together, but the kids have been.
What the world needs more of is mentors.
But yeah, empathy, Yeah, kindness, it's my bea tricky one. I know this often.
Chocolate, dark chocolate, nor cho, Oh the chocolate.
What is there a moment in your life that you would like to revisit? Can I have three?
I really like my mum was very close to all the births of our children. If she wasn't there, she was like right outside the door. But my dad passed away really early after a failed lung transplant. I would love him to come and meet them. Yeah, So it's about bringing dad back.
Yeah, I think the proposal day was pretty good. You guys are reminded me of that day again. That was.
There you go, Yeah, were you near the past? Is that where it was?
Julian rocks you know, I don't know, Julian, you seemed to know.
Yes, I actually know it for a really awful reason though. Yeah, there are people who have yeah, yeah, not shark had come back from a.
Two weeks before of us.
Really in the water.
You didn't even know.
When the husband got in front of the Yeah.
But when we were there, the sharks, you know, the greener sharks came through. Leon pushed me forward. He started going back, and we're holding hands.
You probably drop hands, think through.
They're like a labrador gray nurses lover on you.
They are They are safe.
All right.
Last question? Describe each other in one word.
Please, I need to uncommonly kind, nice.
I've already said mine, fun, fun, bringing back the first uncommonly kind. I think that that does sum up actually the both of you, you know, to to start a charity and to keep this charity going, and knowing what it means and how much work it takes to to continue this on and you know the kindness that you obviously share and like any corporation, it starts from the top down, and having the both of you at the top just you can feel that with raise. So thank
you for everything that you're doing for the youth. It belongs to a lot of other people. Now we dropped a pebbled in Willie and the ripple effect has been exciting to watch, but it belongs to a lot of other people. Now, yeah, yeah, thank you.
Well, thank you made those ripples keep.
Rippling out, Yeah, into a tsunami of love.
Thanks guys, did you get tiary?
Oh yeah, it just feels you well, it just feels the kind of work that they're doing and knowing the impact on those kids and when you know, when anyone talks about, you know, the death of a loved one, I mean, I know we went through that with one of my best friend's brothers when he took his life, and it always takes me back to that moment when we got that news of that devastation and seeing one of my best friends that the impact of that and you know, just to know.
That this charity is is really grassroots, Say Lives and making such a difference in young people's lives. It's just incredibly moving to me.
I agree with all of that and add and making a difference to the mentors'.
Lives absolutely as well.
It's really inspiring and the fact that you can get trained up and to do something that is so caring. And I loved to hear that Vicky and Leon are both mentors as well. They're practicing what they preach.
Was a lot of the people that they work with, like in the corporation, are also mentors as well. They've done the training and done it because they're so inspired by them and inspired by the kind of help that they can offer. And also, as you say, it makes.
Them feel good and that's okay.
That's part of self love.
If you're feeling good by helping another person, amazing.
It can only do a ripple effect of positivity in your own life, make you a better person.
That's fantastic.
So check out Ray. Check out Rays dot org dot au, go to their website. You can read more about them and if you feel inspired, definitely sign up as a mentor. You won't regret it.
Yeah, alrighty, that's enough. Separate bathrooms before.
Today, unless you want to roll in another one.
There's plenty of episodesse go to
It so much good stuff, Thanks so much for listening, Bye for now.