Village Connections are conversations highlighting and connecting women in their light and genius. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and we too can embrace a village to raise ourSELVES and each other.

In this episode, Tara Lee had the pleasure of connecting with Michelle Gardiner. Michelle created The Aspire Series in early 2019 after many years worth of facilitation, social work and coaching experience.

It is a channel for what she wanted to see created in the world. The things that excite her most are sharing about and creating social impact and change. The kind of ideas that shifts people beyond their own experiences and has them realise how impactful we can be in our communities and the world.

She firmly believes that we are here not only for ourselves, but to be both a beacon and soft landing place for others, and to leave the world better just by us being here.

The best bit about this is that there are things that we can do in each and...

A BELATED CELEBRATION FOR SOCIAL WORKERS

From March 16th

“Happy International Social Work Day to all of the Social, Community and other humanitarian workers in my world.

What does it mean to be a Social Worker?

It means to give a sh*t when most people have long disbanded

It means to test your own sanity over and over, while holding and reinforcing others

It means seeing through a lot of what happens in the world, and to still know that you won’t ever see the full picture

It means to listen to things that you never imagined possible and deal with things that you never knew that you were capable of

It means to question over and over and over again and know that there will likely never be an answer

It means to create “resources” out of thin air and to make the impossible happen on a daily basis

And it means to hold humanity at a standard that most never contemplate

...... And a...

Who am I in this world?

First up, I am many many things

I am from Melbourne and I live in Bali- I found myself making a super quick decision to abort all travel plans and jump on the next flight from Hoi An in March last year and to hightail it to Bali, and to move in with a local family only a few days before borders closed and about a week before flights off the island stopped. I’ve always been best at navigating crisis While I now live independently to the local family, it has been a year that has been unlike any other in my lifetime. I had packed up life in Melbourne to begin a new and very unknown chapter, after being a Social Worker and Coach for around 14 years.

I had a few dreams about what I wanted to create for myself, and my re-launch of Aspire is a big piece of it! I originally launched Aspire two years ago to explore lots of ideas that had been brewing for a long time, while I was working full time. At the time, it was largely experiential...