How did you come to be involved with Beyond Words?
I stumbled into Beyond Words. I wanted to volunteer and use my experience in English language teaching and editing to support people who needed help. I previously volunteered and taught English as a second language for the Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES), but I was looking for something with wider impact. Beyond Words provided the opportunity to work with our elders and record their stories.
I joined the Beyond Words Board in 2021 and it has been a steep and enjoyable learning curve. The other Board members are experienced, skilled, supportive and passionate about our mission and they have guided me. I am also a Board member at Cambridge University Press, Australia and New Zealand.
Do you have life or professional experiences, skills, knowledge, or talents that underpin your contribution to BW?
After finishing school, I completed my BA in Geography in Christchurch and set off to see the world. After travelling around, I ended up in Taiwan where I started my career as an English language teacher, but then moved into the English language teaching side of educational publishing. For the past twenty-nine years, I have worked in sales and marketing roles for Cambridge University Press in Taipei, Singapore and Melbourne. Eleven years ago, I completed my Masters in Publishing and Editing at Monash University.
All my experiences, from being the son of immigrants, to childhood chats with my elderly neighbour, to living and working in foreign cultures, have shaped me and given me knowledge, skills and experience to contribute to Beyond Words.
Do you have other roles with Beyond Words?
At Beyond Words I lead the editorial team, write a monthly editorial section for the BW newsletter, and assist in the biographer training program by presenting about the editorial process. I like to help out where I have skills or where I can learn something new, so currently I help applying for funding grants.
What do you see as the organisation’s greatest strengths?
Beyond Words is a unique and inspiring organisation that benefits clients, their families and biographers by recording and publishing family stories. I realised as I was writing my parents’ biography how stories connect us to our past and to each other and how they pass knowledge through generations and provide a sense of place. Preserving family history is important work and we all do it at Beyond Words without capes.
Beyond Words’ greatest strengths are the people who volunteer and those who support the organisation. Everyone shares their expertise to help the organisation function, and our biographers make time to connect with a stranger, record and share their story. That so many people are willing to do this is the greatest strength.
What are the main challenges for Beyond Words?
Funding is an ongoing issue for any voluntary organisation, and Beyond Words is no different. However, we have invested time and effort to explore sponsorship opportunities and research grants and encourage bequests, which should provide a solid funding base for the future.
In the long term we will need to focus on how we evolve as an organisation, how we fund ourselves, how we train and maintain our volunteers and how we promote ourselves. There are many opportunities, but with our limited resources we need to be selective about which opportunities we pursue.
Describe your ideal (but achievable) picture of the organisation in five years.
Although Beyond Words has been operating for eleven years, it is still a young organisation and a long way from reaching its full potential. I would like to see an organisation that has
• more established systems and processes
• a higher profile in aged care and in the wider community
• adequate funding
• the flexibility and resources to work on projects in the community.
I would also like to see us working with researchers to provide evidence of the benefits of the work we do and see Beyond Words publish a book like The Mallees Living Histories that we could sell as a way to raise our profile and raise funds.
Anything else you want to say?
When you talk to people you don’t know you learn that everyone has a bit of gold; everyone has at least one thing to say that will surprise you, amuse you, horrify you, edify you. They tell you things, usually with minimal prodding, and sometimes those things can deepen you, and awaken you to the richness and the grace and even the pain of the human experience. They show themselves to be freestanding worlds. When you’re allowed in, you can internalise a little piece of that person, and by doing so, you grow a little. You gain a bit of empathy, wisdom or understanding.
Joe Keohane
The Power of Strangers