In brief – Bill is a qualified and experienced practitioner in disaster risk mitigation and sustainable development with a focus on community engagement and locally-led empowerment using tools such as ‘Listening with respect’, ‘Mindset awareness and paradigm shift’ and issues relating to ‘Power sharing’ and ‘Dealing with scarcity’.
In detail – Bill is an advocate of household and community developed capacity and disaster resilience from Wodi Wodi Country around Kangaroo Valley, a couple of hours south of Sydney in the beautiful Shoalhaven region. Armed with plenty of volunteering experience around the world in places such as Mozambique, Dominica and Mexico with a great NGO called ‘All Hands and Hearts’, who rebuild schools in disaster-struck regions of the world, Bill has developed a global perspective on the impact of disasters on communities and households. He combines this experience with the academic rigour of a recent Masters degree in Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Development which provided insight into both ‘big picture’ and detail. He recognises the need for an awareness of the scale and complexity of wicked problems to inform and motivate, but not to overwhelm, in our daily activities and actions. He recognises the need for values that stand the test of time and attitudes and behaviours that give us the positive outlook required to solve these wicked problems, not as individuals but by using collective intelligence. He sees collective intelligence as intra-species, that is inter-generational, inter-cultural and inter-perspective amongst the diversity and differences within the human species. He is exploring inter-species collective intelligence starting with listening to the Earth. Bill is involved in his local community as a committee member of Resilience KV, a Friend of the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby Association, an endangered species, and a committee member of the Agricultural and Horticultural Show Society.