There’s one part of my job that I particularly enjoy. I look after our presenters, and as part of that, I get to hear about responses from around Australia and the world about our presentation 1.4 Billion Reasons.

 

As we do a nation-wide call out for people to book the presentation in their community, I thought it was worth sharing a couple of my favourite stories of how presentations have catalysed action:

 

From Peter:

 

“On Saturday night I was out at a party when I looked across the room and saw my wife holding court and from a distance appeared to be passionately explaining something very interesting to a group of women, normally a quiet and shy person I was intrigued to know what had lit her fuse. So I wondered over to listen. She was explaining in some detail the Global Poverty Project and the importance of buying fairtrade products.

 

Then on Sunday afternoon my 12 year old daughter came to me and said. “Dad you said we could sponsor a child through world vision and we haven’t done anything, why not?” This weekend’s father and daughter project had been decided.”

 

From Lachie and Jack:

 

"A few months ago you made the effort of visiting our school in the Victorian alps. As you would remember, my friend Jack and I were planning a walk for charity over the alps to Lakes Entrance (a 250km trek). Your talk at our school greatly inspired us to do this walk for poverty and we were able to get in touch with Oxfam Australia.

 

Our effort also attracted some media attention with our story making the FRONT PAGE of the Border Mail as well as featuring several times in the local Alpine Observer and once in the Bairnsdale Advertiser. ABC also interviewed us to make the broader community aware of our endeavours.

 

We began walking on Boxing Day 2009 and the 250KM journey was completed six days later on New Years Eve (walking on average 45km per day). In total we managed to raise $5014!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for Oxfam Australia.

 

After the blisters got better and we could forget the pain of walking, the thought of helping others and succeeding in our quest as well as seeing some amazing places an things is still strongly with us and we now aspire to tackle greater challenges really trying to make others less fortunate than us to have a better life.”

 

And Nicole:

 

“I'm quite new to RESULTS. I went to the 1.4 Billion Reasons forums and got to know about them there. Then I decided to go to my first meeting last week, and low and behold next thing I end up in Canberra meeting with MPs!”