Blog
The 12 months of 2020
December 31, 2020
Only a few hours left for 2020! It has been such an incredible year of ups and downs. I’ve revisited these words so many times in the last week before posting. I believe it would be trite to rattle off a whole lot of business figures as part of our 12 month report, because this has not been what the year has been about. For many, 2020 has been all about resilience, tenacity, surviving emotionally, repositioning, changing careers; refocusing, and for some businesses realising they don’t need their staff in one location to be functional. It’s been about thinking out of the box like Patissez Manuka and Teddy Pickers Cafe Campbell did to change their business model. It’s been our truly inspiring and treasured community organisations like YWCA Canberra, Soldier On Australia, Canberra PCYC, Karinya House, Menslink, Givit ACT, and Lifeline Canberra (and so many more) that had to think about delivering services in a different way to people in desperate need. There has been too much isolation not seeing loved ones; too many cancer diagnoses where we can’t hug friends, too many blocked nursing home visits, and too many funerals we haven’t been able to attend.
The positive is we know we are an amazingly resilient community – Hands Across Canberra has received so many more donations than the previous year; Heidi Prowse and her team at Mental Illness Education ACT have surpassed outreach numbers never anticipated at the beginning of the year.
In December, the Kim Harvey School of Dance had their annual concert which just summarised everything for me: Finella, a 14 year old dancer, rolled her ankle and hobbled through an entire performance because dance had kept her going through the year, and she wasn’t going to let a rolled ankle stop her doing cartwheels and letting her team down. Her tenacity and resilience just typified the entire year and brought tears.
I didn’t think the concert could get better, but then to hear a First Nations song from Electric Fields of “From Little Things Big Things Grow” with magnificent ballet choreography was, for me, the performance of the year. Google the song – it’s the anthem of the year for 2020 – we are all tiny in the universe and together we can make big things happen …. like surviving 2020. Thanks to Indigenous community leaders like Dan Bourchier and his colleagues at ABC, we are listening to First Nations language on a daily basis and hearing more indigenous stories. With other amazing First Nations leaders like Dion Devow and Nicole Brown and Katrina Fanning to name just a few, from every little indigenous word we learn, big things like closing the gap will happen.
Perhaps next year, I will give a more “normal” annual report quoting stats – but then again, I’ve never been normal and always told I am weird. A huge amount of thanks goes to Kate and Michele and Gillian with everything they’ve done throughout 2020, and we’ve help Kate launch her career at Belle Braidwood from November. Thanks once again to Dani and her team at Allhomes, and Nick and Julie and their team at Canberra Weekly for your support during the year, and hearing me out when I’m lobbying for something free for the community sector.
Time to get ready for a big beautiful 2021.
(Our clients who have trusted us to sell their prized possession of their home or investment property can visit our blog in January to see our stats, thanks for your support.)
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