I’ve been a bit slack with my blogging the last few years, which is a shame given the great work that I’m involved in with the Sydney Peace Foundation, and the research I’m doing at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. Unfortunately there’s only so much time in the day.
Unless you’ve worked in hospitality you don’t know the work that goes into waitressing, cooking and the respect deserved for it. Everyone should work in hospitality, at least once life.
Same goes for organising events. If an event goes seamlessly, as you hope it does, it can appear as if there’s nothing involved. Snap your fingers and voilà. Anyone who has organised an event knows that’s not the way it goes.
A ridiculous numbers of hours go into creating marketing materials, emails, social media, responding to rsvps, guests lists, arranging audio visual set up, media arrangements, parking, chasing up on the above when people don’t get back to you, phone calls, etc etc. Maybe the same goes for most jobs. But certainly everyone should organise an event, at least once in their life.
Anyway, the work I did over the last couple of months paid off with a seamless success. Our partner the Australian Arab Women’s Dialogue, brought us three extraordinary speakers from Lebanon, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.
A breast surgeon explained the cultural reasons that her title is “chest surgeon” (no one uses the word “breast”) even though in the medical industry that means something very different.
You can watch the full event on ABC’s Big Ideas: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2013/04/24/3743694.htm
The next day I was invited to a reception at Government House. It was my first personalised letter with an embossed gold crown on it! And what a spectacular morning it was:
After lining up for a personal greeting, we listened to Her Excellency talk and enjoyed a reception inside (above) followed by morning tea on the steps of Government House.
It was a unique chance for girly conversation with women across many cultures, and even with Her Excellency, the Governor of NSW, Marie Bashir (photo below).
If you are interested check out the Sydney Peace Foundation website and blog here: www.sydneypeacefoundation.org.au. Or to sign up for notifications of our future events: click here.
